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CORD U ROY 


RUTH COMFORT MITCHELL 





Books by 

RUTH COMFORT MITCHELL 


CORDUROY 

NARRATIVES IN VERSE 
JANE JOURNEYS ON 
PLAY THE GAME 


D. APPLETON AND COMPANY 
New York London 





t 



THE NEXT MORNING SHE WAS EARLY ON HER HORSE AND SHE WORE HER 

WORN AND MELLOW CORDUROYS 


[Page 31] 




CORDUROY 



RUTH COMFORT MITCHELL 

• 1 


AUTHOR OF “PLAY THE GAME,** 
“JANE JOURNEYS ON,” ETC. 



D. APPLETON AND COMPANY 

NEW YORK : : LONDON : : 1923 
















COPYRIGHT, 1923, BY 
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY 





© Cl A688535 1 / 

Copyright, 1922, by The Crowell Publishing Company 

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 



... . j 

MAR-6’23 



TO 


W. S. Y. 

WHO HAS PUT ON CORDUROY 
AND WEARS IT WELL 


CORDUROY 


CHAPTER I 


OR the first time in her life—she had been 



alive twenty-two vivid and zestful years 


—Virginia Valdes McVeagh, nicknamed, 
descriptively, “Ginger,” felt something like rever¬ 
ence for a male creature of her own species. 

Her father, that stolid Scot, had died while 
she was a hearty and unimaginative child; Aleck, 
her only brother, killed on the last day of fighting 
in the Great War, had been her pal and play¬ 
fellow, as were, in lesser and varying degrees, the 
young ranchers of the miles-wide neighborhood, 
while the vaqueros and old Estrada, mayordomo 
of her cattle ranch, were her henchmen, loyal, 
admiring, unquestioning. Always she had been 
able to divide the men of her world unhesitatingly 
into two classes—her equals, her inferiors. 

Dean Wolcott was different. He was framed 
in mystery and hallowed by grief, coming to her 


7 


CORDUROY 


—almost like a visitant from another world—in 
the dawn of a Christmas Day she had vowed not 
to keep, bringing her the word of her dead brother 
for which she had thirsted, and a stained and 
crumpled letter in Aleck’s own hand. It was the 
first shred of information she had had since the 
official communication, nearly four months after 
the armistice. That had come on a delicate day 
of early California spring; the rains had been 
late and the hills were only faintly brushed with 
green, but the wild flowers were out, brilliant, 
arresting, and the oaks were vocal with linnets 
and orioles; meadow larks sank liltingly on the 
low ground; the narrow little creek was lively and 
vehement, and the air was honey and wine. Every¬ 
thing was awake and alive except Aleck, and Aleck 
was dead. The grave official statement regretted 
to inform her that Lieutenant Alexander Mc- 
Veagh was dead. Dead; not alive any more; 
never coming back to Dos Pozos; never to ride 
with her over the range again. 

Something in Virginia Valdes McVeagh died 
likewise. When Aleck was there she had seemed 
less than her age; now she was more. She ceased 
at once to be “Ginger.” Swiftly, almost, it 

8 



CORDUROY 


seemed, with a single motion, she grew up. She 
had always been cognizant of every detail of 
enterprise on the big cattle ranch, and now, with 
Estrada’s help, she took competent charge. She 
rode with him over the rolling hills on Aleck’s 
horse, brought in her cattle from remote pastures, 
saw to the planting of her alfalfa crops and the 
harvesting of her wheat, held rodeos, marketed 
her stock. Leaving off the mellow corduroys 
which toned alluringly with her skin and eyes and 
hair, and the brave scarlet sweaters and wine-red 
velvet dresses which sharply underlined her Span¬ 
ish coloring, she swathed herself in black as 
bitterly as her Valdes grandmother would have 
done. She knew that it cut her beauty in two and 
she was glad: there had been jiagelantes on her 
mother’s side of the house, three generations 
earlier. 

The slow and difficult year had crawled away; 
February . . . December. Virginia had refused 
to go to relatives in Los Angeles or San Francisco 
and asked them not to come to her. This first 
black Christmas (the one a year earlier had been 
vibrant with hope) she must be allowed to spend 
alone, in the luxury of uninterrupted and uncon- 

9 



CORDUROY 


soled grief. Even the servants—Estrada and his 
men, old Manuela, the housekeeper, Ling, the 
moon-faced Chinese cook—were banished to San 
Luis Obispo on the morning of the twenty-fourth, 
not to return until the twenty-sixth, but her gift 
to herself of solitude had been snatched away 
from her. Dos Pozos was five miles off the high¬ 
way, but in good weather motorists often took the 
dirt road for a short cut. This year Virginia had 
neglected to have it kept up; the bridge, half a 
mile from the house, was a frail and ancient 
structure. Aleck had meant to replace it with a 
permanent one of concrete, and Estrada had 
begged her to carry out the young seiior’s plan, 
but she would not. Later, perhaps; for the 
present, she was thankful for anything which made 
for isolation. 

And then, ironically enough, the very thing 
which was to have kept the world away, brought 
it to her. It rained in torrents, lavish, riotous 
California rain; the road sank down into a batter 
of soft mud; the bridge whined in the storm; at 
seven o’clock on Christmas Eve four machines and 
ten persons, wailing children among them, were 
stranded and helpless. The telephone line was 


io 



CORDUROY 


down; the vaqueros spending their holiday in 
town; and tradition was rigid; no one, gentle or 
simple, ever lifted the latch of Dos Pozos in 
vain. Grudgingly, with unadorned civility, Vir¬ 
ginia had taken them into the old adobe ranch 
house and prepared to give them camp fare, for 
there was no way in which she could summon 
her servants. 

It immediately appeared, however, that her 
servants did not require summoning; they were 
already there. The good creatures had merely 
driven round the turn of the road in the morning, 
waited until she had ridden off in the rain, and 
crept back again, hiding themselves discreetly in 
their quarters. Their idea had been to feed her 
as the ravens fed the prophet and to keep out 
of her sight, for they were on intimate terms 
with her temper and her tongue. When the 
house party enforced descended upon their mis¬ 
tress they had come boldly forth, rather giving 
themselves airs; what—they wanted respect¬ 
fully to know—would she have done without 
them? 

So it fell out that two brisk and cheerful school¬ 
teachers and a forlorn widower and his shabby 



CORDUROY 


children and a couple of Stanford students and a 
personage in a limousine made philosophically 
merry beneath the roof which had fully intended 
to cover nothing but desolate grief and decent 
silence, and Ling plied happily between his table 
and his glowing range, his queue snapping smartly 
out behind him, and old Manuela built fires and 
made up beds in the guest rooms, and Estrada 
rode into San Luis Obispo to send telegrams to 
distracted families. 

When she went to bed at midnight Virginia had 
worked out something of her rebellion in weari¬ 
ness. She had resurrected toys for the pinched 
children, helped the school-teachers and the Stan¬ 
ford students to trim a tree for them and to deco¬ 
rate the big rooms with snowberries and scarlet 
toyon —spurred herself to a civil semblance of 
hospitality. As she fell asleep she was aware of a 
feeling she had sometimes had when she was a 
rather bad and turbulent child—that, having been 
good, unusually, laboriously good — something 
good should and must come to her. 

It came at sunrise, when Estrada wakened her, 
calling excitedly in front of her window. She 
slipped her feet into Indian moccasins and threw 


12 



CORDUROY 


a serape about her and padded down the long cor¬ 
ridor and out on to the veranda. She heard 
people stirring as she passed the guest rooms; one 
of the children was whimpering with eagerness to 
be dressed and allowed to hunt for its Christmas 
stocking. 

Behind the mayordomo stood a tall man in 
uniform: for one mad moment her heart stood 
still and her eyes dilated and blurred and the 
figure in khaki swam dizzily in the keen morning 
light. 

Then the old Spaniard stepped quickly forward 
and she saw that his eyes were wet. “Gracias a 
Dios, Senorita —it is a friend of Sehor Alejan- 
drino! At last he has come, over the sea and over 
the land, to bring you the message!” 

The stranger came slowly nearer, staring at 
her. She saw then that he was a young man, but he 
did not look young. His eyes were intolerably 
tired and tragic and he was weary with weakness. 
He blinked a little as he looked at her; it was 
as if the brightness of her eyes and mouth and 
the gay serape hurt and dazed him. “You are— 
‘Ginger’?” he wanted gravely to know. 

He spoke in a hoarse whisper and in a whisper 

13 



CORDUROY 


she answered him, breathing fast. ‘ Yes. I am 
Ginger. Aleck-” 

He began to speak, very slowly and carefully, 
pushing the words before him, one at a time, as a 
feeble invalid pushes his feet along the floor. He 
had been with her brother for a month; they had 
come to regard each other as friends, in the red 
intimacy of war; they had had a feeling . . . 
something . . . that last day, that they would not 
both come through it. They had written letters 
and exchanged them, promised each other- 

She cried out at that. “A letter? He wrote 
—you’ve brought me a letter?” She held out her 
hands, shaking. 

He was fumbling at a pocket and his fingers 
were likewise unsteady. He explained, very 
humbly, why he had been so long in coming. He 
had been wounded, too, not an hour later. Shat¬ 
tering wounds ... he moved his thin body un¬ 
comfortably as if at a bad memory; shell shock; 
he had forgotten everything, even to his own 
name. A month ago, in England, he had started 
in to remember, and he had been traveling to her 
ever since. He gave her a worn and soiled bit of 

14 





CORDUROY 


paper, folded up like a child’s letter. Estrada 
slipped softly into the house. 

She snatched at it hungrily and read it three 
times through before she looked up again. Aleck’s 
crude and boyish backhand; Aleck’s crude and 
boyish words, hearty, heartening, lifting the black 
blanket of silence; Aleck. 

Then she looked up and caught her breath 
sharply. A strong shaft of winter morning sun¬ 
light had fallen along the veranda, and it was 
shining on his face and through his face. Vir¬ 
ginia had never in all her days harbored an eerie 

i 

imagining, but she was harboring one now. Her 
Valdes mother had died when she was a baby, and 
her upbringing had been along the gray lines of 
the McVeagh Scotch Presbyterianism; neverthe¬ 
less, from old Manuela, the housekeeper, she had 
heard many a colorful tale of the santos. Now, 
it flashed upon her swiftly, this worn young 
soldier, more than a man in spirit, less than a 
man in body, was like a saint; a warrior saint; 
a martyr saint. He swayed a little, backward, 
away from her; it seemed entirely possible that 
he might melt into the bar of sunlight, into the 
morning. . . . She had hoped and imagined so 

15 



CORDUROY 


many things for so many months ... it was con¬ 
ceivable that she was only hoping and imagining 
this . . . . 

Estrada came out again. His quick Spanish 
cut into her phantasy. “Senorita, this gentleman 
is very tired and ill—he must rest!” He put a 
steadying hand under the young man’s arm and 
he sagged heavily against him. 

Virginia came out of her abstraction with a 
sharp sigh. “Yes, he must rest. Come!” She 
caught the serape together with one hand and she 
was magnificently unaware of her bare brown 
ankles and her bare brown throat, and the tumbled 
ropes of black hair swinging over her shoulders, 
and held open the door. “Come,” she said again, 
smiling mistily back at him. 

The widower’s children were registering shrill 
rapture over their stockings and the tree; the 
older members of the house party, having been 
enlightened by Estrada, drew quietly back and 
watched with leashed curiosity as the trio went 
through the room and down the long corridor. 
Virginia halted before the door of the last bed¬ 
room, the heavy old-fashioned iron latch in her 
hand. “This is Aleck’s room. No one ever 

16 



CORDUROY 


comes here but myself; no one else ever takes 
care of it.” She flung open the door. Then, at 
the dim prompting of some Spanish forbear, 
she made a little ritual of it, taking his hand and 
leading him over the threshold. “Now I give it 
to you.” She led him gently across the red tiled 
floor to a great armchair, cushioned with a bril¬ 
liant Navaho blanket. “This was Aleck’s chair.” 
She began quite steadily. “He always sat here. 
And now you are sitting here. And you saw him 
die, didn’t you? I saw him live, all the years of 
his life, riding the range, in this house, in this room 
—and you saw him die. You saw—Aleck —die ” 
Then she started to cry, very quietly. She slipped 
down and sat huddled on the floor beside him, 
her forehead against the big arm of the chair. 
He leaned over and laid his hand uncertainly on 
her hair, but he could not manage to say anything 
to her. It was as if the courage and energy which 
had driven and dragged him across an ocean and a 
continent had left him utterly, now that his pledge 
was kept, his message given. 

So they stayed there, in silence, save for the 
slight sound of her grief, until old Manuela 
bustled in and took soothing but competent charge. 

17 



CORDUROY 


Manuela was not unaware of her mistress’ bare 
ankles and throat. She cast a scandalized black 
eye upon them, hurried her off to her own room to 
dress, flung up a window to the quick morning air, 
brought a footstool, tucked the Navaho snugly 
about the young soldier. 

“And now, I go to bring the senor something 
warm to drink. Would you like coffee or choco¬ 
late, Senor?” 

Dean Wolcott roused himself with a palpable 
effort. “I must not stay. My cousin is waiting 
at San Obispo; he will be anxious—” 

“Coffee or chocolate, Senor?” The old woman 
slipped a soft, small pillow behind his head. 

“Coffee, then,” said the stranger, wearily. 

“Chocolate will be better, Senor.” She beamed 
approval on him, quite as if he had chosen choco¬ 
late. “I go now to bring chocolate for the senor.” 

She was back in ten minutes with a steaming cup 
and stood over him until he had drunk the last 
velvet drop of it. “And now the senor will rest.” 

The warm comfort of it went over him like a 
drug. He leaned his head back acquiescently. 
“Yes; I will rest for a few moments.” 

Manuela turned back the spread of delicate 

18 



CORDUROY 


Mexican drawnwork and patted the pillows. 
“The sehor would rest better upon the bed,” she 
said silkily. 

Dean Wolcott shook his head. “Thank you; 
I do not care to lie down. I will sit here for a few 
moments. . . .” 

She was kneeling before him, swiftly and surely 
divesting him of his shoes. “The sehor will rest 
better upon the bed,” she stated with soft con¬ 
viction. He got up out of the chair when it be¬ 
came clear that she would lift him out if he did 
not, and at once he found himself lying in utter 
lassitude on Aleck McVeagh’s bed. “For an 
hour ... no longer . . . ” he said with drowsy 
dignity. 

The old woman drew a light serape up to his 
chin, nodded indulgently, shaded the window, and 
went away, treading with heavy softness down the 
corridor. 

She met her mistress at the end of it. The girl 
had flung herself swiftly into her riding clothes 
and her eyes were shining. “I must talk to him, 
Manuela! There are a thousand things to ask!” 

“Not yet, my heart,” said the old woman. 

19 



CORDUROY 


“First he must sleep. He is broken with weari¬ 
ness.” 

Ginger turned reluctantly. Her house party 
enforced was at breakfast and her place was with 
her motley guests. What she wanted to do was 
to wait outside Aleck’s door until Dean Wolcott 
wakened, but she was feeling amazingly gentle and 
good, so she went at once to the dining room and 
presided with her best modern version of the Val¬ 
des tradition. 

She kept on being gentle with the wayfarers; 
she was not annoyed with them any longer for 
having mired down on her neglected road before 
her neglected bridge. It seemed almost as if she 
would never be annoyed with anything or anybody 
again, now that the black blanket of silence was 
lifted; now that she had word—warm, human, 
close-range word—of Aleck, and Aleck’s letter. 

Her heart lifted when she thought of the mes¬ 
senger. Aleck had sent him to her, and he had 
come—over the sea and over the land, as Es¬ 
trada said, fighting his weakness as he had fought 
the enemy. She summoned up the echo of his 
tired voice, pushing the words before him slowly, 
one by one, the memory of him there in the shaft 


20 




CORDUROY 


of morning sunlight, the austere beauty of his 
worn young face. Her guests, filled with lively, 
kind curiosity, wanted to hear about him, but she 
let Estrada tell what there was to tell. When 
she spoke of him it was in a hushed voice—as if 
he might hear and be disturbed, the length of the 
rambling old house away; as if he were something 
to be spoken of in deep respect. It was that way 
in her own mind; she whispered about him in her 
thoughts. 



CHAPTER II 


B Y three o’clock Estrada had mended the 
road and propped the bridge and gotten 
the four machines under way. Ginger 
saw them off very patiently. They were volubly 
grateful and expressive and she let them take all 
the time they wanted for the thanks and farewells, 
and waited to wave them out of sight. The last 
car to round the curve was the one containing the 
widower and his children—forlorn no longer but 
exuding sticky satiety and clutching their new 
treasures. 

Then she hurried into the house. The soldier 
guest was still sleeping, the housekeeper reported. 
Ginger went on tiptoe to the door and listened. 
There were the countless questions to ask him 
about Aleck; she grudged every missed moment. 

“We dare not wake him,” said Manuela with 
authority. “And he must eat before he talks 
again. Go away, my heart. I will keep watch.” 
She sat down, again in a chair in the corridor and 


22 


CORDUROY 


folded her hard brown hands on her stomach. 
“Listen! Some one comes!” 

There was the sound of a motor and Ginger 
went to see who it was—the house party might 
have found worse going beyond, and turned back. 
It was a car from the garage at San Luis Obispo, 
and before it reached the house she saw that it 
carried one person beside the driver—a young 
man who held himself singularly erect. He was, 
he announced, the cousin who had been waiting, 
waiting all day, at San Luis Obispo, for Mr. Dean 
Wolcott. He wanted to know where Mr. Wolcott 
was. His manner rather conveyed that Mr. Wol¬ 
cott might have met with foul play; that almost 
anything might occur in a wilderness of this 
character. 

Miss McVeagh explained that Mr. Dean Wol¬ 
cott was sleeping; he was greatly exhausted and 
had been asleep since morning. 

The other Mr. Wolcott was clearly annoyed. 
The trip from Boston to California, undertaken 
only a day after his cousin had landed from Eng¬ 
land, had been wholly against his advice and judg¬ 
ment. He had been unable to understand why his 

23 



CORDUROY 


cousin could not have mailed Miss McVeagh her 
brother’s letter, and written her any details. 

Ginger, looking levelly at him, saw at once that 
he had been and always would be unable to under¬ 
stand. She said, very civilly, that she hoped they 
would both rest for a few days at Dos Pozos be¬ 
fore making the return journey. 

“Thank you, but that will be quite impossible,” 
said the young man, hastily. “It will be necessary 
to leave Los Angeles to-morrow. The entire 
Wolcott connection—” it was as if he had said— 
“The Allied Nations,” or “The Nordic Peoples” 
—“will postpone the holiday festivities until Mr. 
Dean Wolcott’s return.” He desired to be shown 
where his cousin was sleeping, and he went briskly 
in to rouse him, past the protesting Manuela. 

Ginger went out of the house. Large as it was, 
there did not seem to be room enough in it for the 
newcomer and herself. He brought her sharply 
out of her mood of whispering gentleness, and she 
walked a little way toward the bridge and planned 
to begin work at once on the permanent structure 
of Aleck’s intention. A big and beautiful idea 
came to her; there was no way of marking Aleck’s 
grave, but this bridge should be built in his 

24 



CORDUROY 


memory, inscribed to him. It brought the tears 
to her eyes and she turned, at sound of feet on 
the path, and saw Dean Wolcott coming toward 
her, and now, as in the morning, the sun was on 
him—this time the evening sun, slipping swiftly 
down behind the hills. 

He was faintly flushed with sleep and his voice 
was stronger and steadier. “I am ashamed,” he 
said. “I have slept away my one day with you. 
I had concentrated for so long on the single pur¬ 
pose of bringing Aleck’s message to you that, once 
it was done, everything seemed to be done. I sank 
into that sleep as if it were a bottomless pit. I 
must go back to-night. My mother—my peo¬ 
ple— You see, I spent only a day with them.” 

“You must go,” said Ginger. “You were good 
—oh, you were good to come!” 

They stood then without talking, looking at 
each other, gravely. They seemed to be groping 
toward each other through the mists of grief and 
tragedy and strangeness which encompassed them. 
The little scene had—and would always have in 
their memories—a lovely and lyric quality. It 
was a fresh-washed world; the hills, the roads, the 
trails, the chaparral were a clean and shining 

25 



CORDUROY 


bronze; the distant alfalfa fields were emerald 
counterpanes and the toyon berries, freed from 
the last stubborn summer dust, were little shouts 
of color. 

He passed a hand across his troubled eyes. 
“There is so much to tell you. . . . Every day, 
every hour, things grow clearer; I remember more 
and more. But I will write to you. I will write 
you everything.’’ 

“I don’t know, I can’t explain—” Ginger was 
whispering again—“but it almost seems as if 
you’d brought Aleck back to me. I can never 
see him again, but — it’s different, somehow. 
That dreadful, black, lost feeling is gone. I won’t 
wear black any more; Aleck hated black. And 
I’m going to build that bridge, as he planned to 
build it, of stone, and—and put his name on it. 
It’s—all I can do for him.” 

His tired eyes lighted. “Will you let me share 
it with you—let me design it? I do that sort of 
thing, you know. I should love helping you with 
Aleck’s bridge.” His voice was kindling to 
warmth now. “A bridge—there could be nothing 
better for a memorial.” He fumbled in his pocket 
and brought out a notebook and pencil. “Shall 

26 



CORDUROY 


we go a little nearer? I’ll make just a rough 
sketch of the situation.” They walked on. 

The cousin came to the edge of the veranda 
and called a warning; there was very little time. 
Dean Wolcott frowned and kept steadily on, 
Ginger walking beside him in her strange new si¬ 
lence. He did not speak again until he had made 
the small, unsteady sketch on a leaf of his note¬ 
book. Then he came a little closer to her, peer¬ 
ing at her through the fading light. The sun 
had gone and the brief afterglow was going. “I 
will send the design as soon as I am sure of doing 
it decently—within a few weeks, I hope.” It was 
as if he were seeing her— her —not merely the per¬ 
son to whom with incredible difficulty and delay 
he had delivered a message. “And after a while, 
when I am—myself—may I come again?” His 
voice was huskily eager. “May I come back? I 
want to know Aleck’s country; I want to know 
Aleck’s— you.” 

She took his thin fingers into a warm brown 
grasp. “Please come! Please come and stay!” 
The other Mr. Wolcott was coming down the 
path, picking his way neatly through the mud, 

2? 



CORDUROY 


but she did not let Dean Wolcott’s hand go. 
“And please come—soon!” 

The capable cousin took him away at dusk. 
They would get a train out of San Luis Obispo 
at midnight and leave Los Angeles for Boston 
the next forenoon. He had it all compactly 
figured out. If they made proper connections 
—and he looked as if trains rarely if ever trifled 
with him—they would reach home on the day and 
at the hour when he had planned to reach home. 

Ling and Manuela had hastily cooked and 
served an early supper and Ginger sat across the 
table from her two guests, looking at them and 
listening to them, eating nothing herself. It was 
' to be observed that the worn young soldier and 
his kinsman shared certain characteristics of face 
and figure—the same established look of race— 
but they were two distinct variations on the family 
theme. 

For the first time in her assured and unquestion¬ 
ing life Ginger was acutely aware of her table 
—of the contrast between the fine old silver and 
glass which her mother, Rosalia Valdes, had 
brought with her to Dos Pozos as a bride and the 

28 



CORDUROY 


commonplace and stupid modern china which she 
herself had bought at San Luis Obispo; of old 
Manuela’s serene crudities of service. The other 
Mr. Wolcott was carefully civil, but he managed 
to make her stingingly conscious of the number 
and variety of miles between Boston and her 
ranch: he had rather the air of a cautious and 
tactful explorer among wild tribes. Whenever 
he looked at her, which was not often, she felt 
like a picture in a travel magazine—“native belle 
in holiday attire”—like a young savage princess 
with strings of wampum and a copper ring in her 
nose. 

But she did feel, at any rate, like a princess: 
he aroused in her an absurd desire to talk about 
the McVeaghs in Scotland and the Valdes fam¬ 
ily in Spain; to drag out heirlooms and ancient 
treasures. 

Dean Wolcott was very white again and said 
little. When they were in the machine he rallied 
himself with a visible effort. “I will send the 
sketch soon,” he said, rather hollowly, “and I 
will write you—everything.” Then he seemed 
to sink back into his weary weakness; even the 
glow died out of his eyes. 

29 




CORDUROY 


Ginger watched the machine's little red tail 
light disappear around the curve. She was cer¬ 
tain that, directly they were under way, the other 
Mr. Wolcott was telling him how very much 
wiser and more sensible, how much less exhaust¬ 
ing and expensive it would have been to mail 
Aleck’s letter to her. 

Then she went briskly into her own room and 
came out into the corridor presently with her arms 
overflowing with black clothing — black riding 
things, black waists and skirts, black dresses. 

“Manuela,” she said, as the old woman came 
up to her, staring, “these are for you and your 
daughters. I’ve done with them.’’ 

Manuela squealed with rapture. “Mil gracias 
y gracias a Dios, Senorita mia!” she purled. She 
had begged her mistress to leave off mourning, 
much as her Spanish soul approved it, and now 
she had her wish, and this bountiful precipitation 
of manna besides. She gathered it up gleefully 
and w r addled off with her dark face creased into 
lines of supreme content. 

Ginger was very much pleased with herself. 
This was the way in which she—Ginger McVeagh 
—did things. She decided to lay off black, and 

30 



CORDUROY 


instantly, with one gesture, she cleansed her 
wardrobe completely and forever of its somber 
presence. 

The next morning she was early on her horse 
and she wore her worn and mellow brown cordu¬ 
roys and her seasoned old Stetson, and Estrada 
and his men nodded knowingly at each other and 
smiled shyly at her. It was curious how shy and 
how respectful they were, the hard-riding, hard- 
drinking vaqueros. The Spanish and Mexican 
ones among them had a manner which was just 
as good and decidedly pleasanter than that of the 
other Mr. Wolcott, and the Americans, old 
grizzled chaps in the main who had ridden for 
her father, had a whimsical poise and a rugged 
picturesqueness of diction. 

It was an oddly feudal life for a twenty-two- 
year-old girl in the up-to-the-minute days of the 
twentieth century, the more so, of course, because 
of her brother’s death, but it had been sufficiently 
so, even before he went to war. Her mother had 
died when she was a baby, her father when she 
was a child; Aleck had firmly sent her away to 
boarding school three times, and three times he 
had weakly let her come home. He was bleakly 

3i 



CORDUROY 


lonesome without her; he concurred, in his happy 
and simple soul, with the ranchers who laughed 
and said—“Oh, let her alone—she knows twice 
as much now as most young ones of her age!” 
Family connections in San Francisco and Los 
Angeles protested mildly, but they were busy with 
their own problems and Dos Pozos was a mar¬ 
velous place to take the children and spend vaca¬ 
tions, and Ginger had probably had about all the 
schooling she needed for that life and that was 
undoubtedly the life she meant always to lead. 
Thus, comfortably, they dismissed the matter, and 
sent her an occasional new novel for cultural 
purposes and came months later to find half the 
leaves uncut. Ginger would have read it with a 
good deal of enjoyment if she could have stayed 
indoors long enough; evenings she was apt to be 
sleepy very early. 

Now the word went over the wide neighbor¬ 
hood that Aleck McVeagh’s buddy had come and 
brought a letter from him, and told his sister all 
about his life over there, and his death, and 
Ginger had given away all her mourning and put 
on her regular clothes and the ranchers rode over 
on their hard-mouthed, wind-swift horses or drove 

32 



CORDUROY 


up in their comfortable, battered cars and asked 
her to barbecues and rodeos again. 

’Rome Ojeda, who lived thirty miles away, 
heard the news, came the thirty miles at a Span¬ 
ish canter in a little over four hours, flung the 
reins over the head of his lathered horse to the 
ground, walked with jingling spurs on to her ver¬ 
anda and made hearty love to her. 

He had intended to marry her ever since she 
came home from boarding school for the last 
time and he saw her in a scarlet sport coat and 
a scarlet tarn. He was Aleck’s best friend and 
Aleck had looked on with satisfaction; he wasn’t 
keen to give Ginger up to anybody, but it wouldn’t 
be really giving her up to have her marry old 
’Rome, and she’d be mortally certain to marry 
somebody. Ginger, however, wasn’t at all sure 
that she was. By and by, perhaps; certainly not 
now, when she had many much more interesting 
things to do. So ’Rome Ojeda had bided his time 
good-naturedly; she was pretty young, and he 
wasn’t so old himself; just as well, probably, to 
play around awhile. He let it be rather well 
known, however, that she was going to marry him 
as soon as she was ready to marry anybody. 

33 



CORDUROY 


Now he was direct and forceful. “Ginger, look 
here! You’re old enough now, and you’re all 
alone, and I’ve waited the deuce of a while. No 
sense waiting any longer!” He showed his very 
white teeth in a sudden smile and flung a quick 
arm about her. He was a big and beautiful 
creature, Jerome Ojeda, Spanish-American, hot¬ 
headed, hot-tongued, warm-hearted. He had 
almost graduated from the High School at San 
Luis Obispo; there had been a rodeo in which he 
wanted to ride, so he rode in it. He took a spec¬ 
tacular first place in the “Big Week” as the affair 
was called, and he had never experienced the 
palest pang of regret for the little white cylinder 
tied with a blue ribbon. 

Ginger got herself promptly out of his arms. 
She wasn’t in the least shocked or resentful but 
she was disconcertingly cool. “I don’t want to 
marry—anybody, ’Rome,” she said. 

He caught her shoulders in his dark hands and 
gave her a small shake. “Don’t be a little fool! 
Of course you want to marry somebody. It’s— 
what you’re for . You want to marry me, only you 
don’t know it yet. But you will.” He brought his 
brown face nearer. “When I make up my mind, 

34 



CORDUROY 


I generally put it over, don’t I ?” He gave her an¬ 
other little shake. “Don’t I?” 

She considered him calmly. “Generally, yes,” 
she said. 

He enveloped her swiftly in a rough, breath¬ 
taking hug, and as swiftly let her go again. “All 
right; I can wait a while longer.” He strode, 
spurs jingling, toward his horse. 

Ginger called after him, hospitably: “Don’t 
go now, ’Rome ! Stay for dinner. Look at Pedro 
—he’s dead tired.” 

He swung himself into the saddle without 
touching the stirrups and smiled back at her. His 
smile was very white and dazzling in his brown 
face. “When I stay, querida, I’ll stay—right. 
And Pedro’ll take me where I want to go; there’ll 
be horses when I’m gone.” He struck spurs into 
the dripping horse and was off at a smooth and 
rhythmic gallop. 

Ginger frowned, looking after him. She did 
like old ’Rome a lot. She liked everything about 
him except the way he treated his stock. Still, 
he was no worse than most of them. But she 
didn’t want to marry him; she didn’t want to 
marry anybody; she was much too busy and 
happy. 


35 



CHAPTER III 


D EAN WOLCOTT sent a dignified and 
| satisfying design for the bridge, and 
Ginger had it executed in rough stone 
brought down from the hills. When it was fin¬ 
ished it was a sincere and lasting thing, and she 
never went over it too quickly to rest her eyes 
on the plate set into the rock which bore Aleck’s 
name and the dates of his birth and death, and, 
beneath—“From his sister and his friend.” 

After a little time the letters had begun to 
come; long, fluent, vivid letters; realistic stories 
of the life he and Aleck had lived together. 
Ginger read them with laughter and with tears, 
and wrote short, shy answers on cheap stationery. 
Ordinarily, she would have used the official ranch 
paper, with the name at the top—“Dos Pozos, Vir¬ 
ginia Valdes McVeagh, sole proprietor,” and a 
neat cut of a long-horned steer at one side and a 
bucking horse at the other—but she had a dim 
sense of what the other Mr. Wolcott’s expression 

36 



CORDUROY 


would be when he saw. Therefore, she used tab¬ 
let paper and envelopes which did not quite match; 
sometimes she used the regular stamped en¬ 
velopes. Her writing was unformed and unin¬ 
teresting; she loathed composing letters and they 
sounded and looked as if she did. She had never 
cared about getting them, save Aleck’s. The Los 
Angeles and San Francisco relatives wrote chiefly 
to ask if they might come and bring the children 
for a little visit with dear Virginia, and grateful 

bread-and-butter notes after they had gone home. 

» 

She liked getting letters now, however; she found 
Dean Wolcott’s many-sheeted ones the most en¬ 
thralling reading she had ever done. He was 
steadily gaining weight and strength and poise 
again, he told her. In the early summer he began 
to talk about coming, and in July he announced 
that he would arrive at San Luis Obispo on the 
twenty-sixth. 

Ginger sat a long time with this letter in her 
hand. Then she went to the telephone and called 
up her favorite aunt by long distance, in San 
Francisco, and asked if she might come up to 
her next day and do some shopping. 

Her Aunt Fan was cordial and kind. She was 


37 




CORDUROY 


really very fond of Ginger; fond enough to like 
having her with her for little visits but not quite 
fond enough to visit her on the ranch. Aunt 
Fan’s idea of the country was a tiresome geo¬ 
graphical division through which you passed on 
your way to a city. Besides, it was a place of 
beguiling cream and broilers and hot breadstuffs; 
a place where one invariably and weakly ate too 
much. 

Now she said that Ginger was to come at once 
and they’d have a wonderful time together; she’d 
been meaning to send for her, anyway. 

Ginger took the day train from San Luis 
Obispo and reached San Francisco in the evening; 
this, she knew, was an easier time for her aunt 
to meet her than in the morning. Aunt Fan had 
a taxi waiting and bundled her delightedly into it. 

“Dearie, are you simply dead? I told the 
doctor we might join him at Tait’s for a little 
while, to hear the music and— But I don’t 
know—” she broke off, looking at her niece’s 
costume, and shaking her head. “My dear child, 
where did you get that dress?” 

It was a one-piece thing in blue serge of ordi¬ 
nary quality, listlessly trimmed with black braid, 

38 



CORDUROY 


and the neck line was just too low and a good 
deal too high. 

“In San Luis,” said Ginger, meekly. She was 
always meek with her aunt on the subject of 
clothes. “It was only twenty-two fifty.” 

“It looks it,” said Aunt Fan, briefly. “And 
that mal-formed hat, and light-topped shoes 
(there hasn’t been a light-topped shoe worn since 
the flood!) and brown gloves ! My dear!” She 
hailed the chauffeur. “Straight back to the St. 
Agnes, please.” 

“I bought all these things ages ago,” said 
Ginger, humble still, “before I went into mourn¬ 
ing. I’ve given all the black stuff to Manuela. I 
didn’t think it mattered, just for the train.” 

“My child,” said her aunt with solemn and pas¬ 
sionate conviction, “clothes always matter. I 
wouldn’t be divorced in a dress like that.” She 
sighed. “How you, with your Spanish blood, 
can have so little sense of line and color— Oh, 
I know you look well enough on the ranch, on a 
horse—‘Daring Nell, the Cattle Queen’—that 
sort of thing, but you can’t ride your horse into 
restaurants and drawing-rooms and theaters, and 
as soon as you dismount you look like the hired 

39 



CORDUROY 


help!” She was heartily angry with her by the 
time they arrived at the apartment house. No 
one could fathom why it had been named the St. 
Agnes; it was a good deal more like the Queen 
of Sheba. 

Ginger followed her into Apartment C. It was 
the first time she had visited her aunt here, and it 
struck her that it was like the inside of a silk- 
lined and padded candy box de luxe; it was a good 
deal like Aunt Fan herself. 

It began to strike Mrs. Featherstone that her 
niece was turning the other cheek with unprece¬ 
dented docility. “Look here,” she cried, catching 
hold of her and turning her face to the light, “let 
me look at you. What is it? What’s come over 
you?” She shook her as ’Rome Ojeda had shaken 
her but with less muscular authority. “What do 
you want clothes for?” 

“Because I have only things like this, and—” 
she was entirely unflurried and direct about it 
—“because Dean Wolcott, Aleck’s friend, you 
know, is coming out for a visit.” 

Aunt Fan studied her thoughtfully. “When’s 
he coming?” 

“The twenty-sixth—a week from Saturday.” 

40 



CORDUROY 


a Oh, Lord!” said her aunt with deep feeling. 
“How I do detest the country in July! Well, 
Manuela’ll simply have to bring me a breakfast 
tray, whether she thinks it immoral or not. I will 
not get up in the middle of the night.” 

“But, Aunt Fan, I didn’t expect you to come.” 
Ginger was wholly frank about it. 

“My dear girl, I don’t suppose you want me 
any more than I want to come and listen to the 
crickets with their mufflers open all night, but—I 
ask you—can you entertain a strange young man, 
Boston y too, isn’t he?—alone?” 

“I don’t see why not,” said her niece, coolly. 
“He isn’t strange at all; he was Aleck’s friend.” 

“Well, it doesn’t matter whether you see or 
not,” said Mrs. Featherstone, crisply. “I’m com¬ 
ing. I suppose I’ll gain eighteen pounds as I did 
before. See here, will you promise not to let Ling 
make waffles?” Her carefully tinted face broke 
up suddenly into little wrinkles of smiles. “There, 
never mind! I love you if you do weigh a hundred 
and ten and eat everything!” 

Mrs. Featherstone weighed a hundred and 
sixty-nine and she ate like a canary and thought 
about food most of the time, and her large, comely 


4i 



CORDUROY 


face had a chronic expression of wistful yearning. 
Clergymen and lecturers and interpreters liked 
having her in the front row; they found her 
intense concentration and her blue-eyed gaze 
extremely helpful and inspiring, and they had no 
way of knowing that she was thinking raptly to 
herself— “If I should go over to the Palace for 
lunch and have turkey hash and potatoes au gratin 
and popovers and a cup of chocolate, and walk 
all the way home, fast, I don’t believe I’d gain an 
ounce!” 

She was Ginger’s father’s half sister, and she 
had been twice married. Her first husband had 
died and her second had been divorced, but she 
was still on very kindly and pleasant terms with 
him. He gave her a generous alimony and she 
was able to live in a smart apartment with a smart 
maid and wear the smartest of clothes and she 
wanted for nothing in the world except food. 

“Here’s your room, dearie,” she said, piloting 
her niece into a tiny apricot-colored guest chamber. 
“I suppose it looks small after the ranch; you 
couldn’t rope a steer in it, but it’s large enough, if 
you’re not boisterous. You had to sleep on the 
davenport when I was at the Livingston, didn’t 

42 



CORDUROY 


you? This is no end nicer; it ought to be, heaven 
knows, with what I pay for it. Jim voluntarily 
gave me another hundred a month, did I tell 
you?” She sighed and winked her blue eyes vio¬ 
lently. “He’s a prince, if ever there was one. He 
said it was only fair—H. C. of L., and all that. 
N ow, I ll just slip into something loose and we’ll 
have a chatter. Lucinda,” she called the little 
trim negress, “you make Miss McVeagh a cup of 
chocolate. You’ll see,” she turned to her niece 
again, “I’ll watch you drink it without a quiver. 
I ought to be a martyr or something—you know 
—hunger strikes—” She went away breathlessly 
to get out of her armor, and Ginger opened the 
window and let the keen, foggy night air into the 
little soft room. She always felt trapped in her 
Aunt Fan’s pretty abiding places. Nevertheless, 
she stayed a whole week this time, and got snugly 
into her aunt's good graces by buying everything 
she suggested. 

“We’ll get downtown early ” Mrs. Feather- 
stone planned earnestly, the night of her arrival, 
“oh, bright and early, before any one’s out—by 
eleven o’clock if we can possibly manage it—and 

43 



CORDUROY 


get you some things you can wear right out of the 
shop, before any one sees you.” 

She had an excellent sense of values, Ginger's 
Aunt Fan, and she let the girl keep true to type 
in her selections—a mannish coat suit of heather 
brown jersey, sport blouse of rough creamy silk, 
snub-nosed little Scotch brogues and wool stock¬ 
ings, fabric gloves with gauntlet cuffs and smart 
buckles, and a small brown hat which had plenty 
of assurance even without its stab of burnt orange. 
“Now,” said Mrs. Featherstone with a sigh of 
deep relief, “let’s go!” 

They went tirelessly, late forenoons and solid 
afternoons and Ginger had presently a large 
trunkful of clever clothes—gay ginghams and 
crisp organdies, boldly plaided sport skirts and 
sweaters in solid colors to match, and two evening 
frocks (though these Ginger protested she would 
never need) in scarlet and persimmon. “I’m 
having a color spree,” said Aunt Fan. “All the 
things I’d adore to wear and can’t.” 

They were at Dos Pozos four days before Dean 
Wolcott was due. Mrs. Featherstone had been 
watching her niece narrowly. “What’s he like, 

44 



CORDUROY 


this chap?” she had wanted to know a day or so 
after Ginger had come to her. 

The girl waited an instant before answering. 
“I—don’t know, Aunt Fan.” 

“You don’t know?” 

The girl shook her head. “You see, he was 
only at the ranch one day, and he slept most of 
that—he was so exhausted. I don’t believe I saw 
him for two hours in all.” 

Aunt Fan stared. “Well—but you must have 
formed some impression. What do you think 
he’s like, if you don’t know?” 

This time she waited even longer before an¬ 
swering. She was calling up the memory of the 
Christmas day—the first meeting in the morning; 
the look of him as he came toward her in the rich 
light of the setting sun, his weary speech; the way 
his eyes had kindled. “I think,” she said, wholly 
unaware that she was speaking with the same 
whispering gentleness with which she had spoken 
to him, “he is different from—everybody else in 
the world.” 

Aunt Fan said nothing more, and tiptoed hastily 
away from the subject. She wrote that night to 
her former husband—she always wrote to thank 

45 



CORDUROY 


him for the alimony—“Jim, I’m keeping my 
fingers crossed! She’s simply bowled over by this 
chap, and he certainly must be interested, to cross 
the continent in July. Heavens, but I’d be glad to 
see her settled—married to somebody beside a 
cow-puncher—living in civilization! I wish you'd 
slip down to Boston and look him up, will you? 
That’s a lamb! His name is Dean Wolcott and 
he’s a Harvard man, and a sort of architect. 
When I think what it would mean to me, to be 
sure I’d never have to visit her on the ranch 
again! Be careful not to rush around in the heat, 
Jim; Boston air is like pudding sauce and you 
know you never had any sense of taking care of 
yourself. Let me hear immediately what you find 
out.” 

Ginger had been honest with her aunt. She 
didn’t know what Dean Wolcott was like, but she 
would know on Friday! She was not analytical 
or introspective enough to know what he stood 
for; to realize that he was—up to that time—not 
a person to her, but a quality, a substance; he was 
all the heroes of all the books she had never read; 
he was the music she had never heard; the far 
places she had never seen. And he was silvered 

46 



CORDUROY 


and hallowed by his association with her beloved 
dead brother. 

Dean Wolcott’s cousin—the other Mr. Wolcott 
who had disapprovingly guided him across the 
continent and back—asked him, searchingly, what 
he was going out to California for. Dean Wol¬ 
cott wasn’t able to tell him; he wasn’t able to tell 
himself. He said to his kinsman and reiterated 
to himself that he wanted to have a look at that 
bridge; he had designed it in a white heat of 
enthusiasm, and while he believed it was good, he 
was anxious to see it finished. Also, he was at 
some pains to tell his cousin and his own con¬ 
sciousness, he felt he ought to see Miss McVeagh 
again; he had been a spineless weakling, sleeping 
away his one day there; it was the very least he 
could do for old Aleck to see her once more, and 
tell her, by w T ord of mouth, the things which were 
flat and cold on the written page. 

Nevertheless, passing up many pleasant summer 
plans made by his family and his friends, making 
his little explanation over and over again, he felt 
rather foolish, and the Wolcott connection, as the 
cousin would have said, did not enjoy feeling 

47 



CORDUROY 


foolish. The trip across the sweltering states was 
unendurably hot; while they were going through 
Kansas he thought several times of wiring to Dos 
Pozos that he was ill again, and must turn back. 
He was still wondering, in Los Angeles, just why 
he had come, and he wondered from eight to 
three, in the parlor car of the coast-line day train, 
rumbling through scenery that was brown and dry 
and hot, but when he got out at San Luis Obispo 
he stopped wondering. He knew, at once and 
definitely, why he had come. 

The reason was waiting for him on the plat¬ 
form. She wore a white flannel sport skirt and a 
scarlet coat of jersey and a black hat with scarlet 
poppies on it, and she glowed like a poppy herself 
in heat which wilted other people and made them 
look faded and drained. 

She was driving Aleck’s car, a seasoned and 
dependable old vehicle, and they said very little, 
after the necessities of luggage had been seen to, 
until they had left the town behind and were 
mounting into the hills. It was hot; Dean Wolcott 
thought he had never known such heat, but it had 
a fine, dry, shimmering quality; the breeze, though 
it might have blown out of an oven, was electric, 

48 



CORDUROY 


bracing. He took off his hat and let the sun shine 
on his head and the wind muss up the precision of 
his hair. Ginger did not look at him; she never 
took her eyes from the road when she was driving 
—a promise she had made Aleck—but she could 
feel that he was looking at her. She felt very 
silent and shy and a good deal frightened. 

Dean, on the other hand, was feeling, with 
every minute and every mile, more serene confi¬ 
dence; a greater sense of glad decision. This was 
why he had come; he must always have known, 
secretly, in his depths. 

“I want to see the bridge,” he said, after the 
longest of their pauses. 

“Yes. I’ll tell you when to begin looking. You 
can see it a long way.” Eyes rigidly front, even 
though they had left the worst of the grade now. 

He knew that she was frightened and it made 
him feel tremendously triumphant; surer of him¬ 
self than he had been since he went down on the 
last day of fighting. 

“Now you can see the bridge,” said Ginger, 
lifting one hand from the wheel to point it out 
to him. 

“Yes,” said Dean. He did not speak again 

49 



CORDUROY 


until they had reached it. Then pride rose in him 
for an instant. “It is good,” he sighed, content¬ 
edly. “I couldn’t be sure. It’s good!” He got 
out of the car and waited for her to follow, but 
she would not. 

“No; I want you to see it first—alone.” 

He went over it, beyond it; stood well away 
from it and studied it. Then he came on to it 
again, halting halfway, looking at her. “Now 
will you come?” 

And, just as he had stopped wondering, Ginger 
stopped being afraid. She went to him steadily, 
her head high. 

He was bareheaded still, and she noticed now 
for the first time that his hair was very fair and 
very fine, brushed sleekly back from his forehead, 
shining; that he was taller than she had realized; 
that there was a look of power about him for all 
his slimness and his cool coloring. Then she 
stopped noticing altogether, because he had come 
swiftly to her and caught her in his arms. 

“Here, on Aleck’s bridge,” he said, happily. 
“We’ve come to each other across Aleck’s bridge; 
it was Aleck who brought us together.” Then 
he ceased talking about Aleck and kissed her. 

50 



CORDUROY 


“Scotch granite and Spanish flame; that is what 
you are,” he told her, holding her away from him 
for an instant to consider her. “There was never 
any one like you; you have a stern Scotch chin and 
a soft Spanish mouth; you are—” then, aware of 
the way he was wasting time, he left off making 
phrases and kissed her Spanish mouth, and 
Estrada, riding in from the range, reined in his 
horse and stared, wide-eyed, and Aunt Fan, com¬ 
ing out on to the veranda, looked down at them 
and gasped, and wondered when the result of 
Jim’s investigations would come, and old Manuela, 
watching from a window, crossed herself and 
called fervently upon her favorite saint. 

But for the two on Aleck’s bridge there was, 
for that slender, golden, perishable moment, no 
one else in the glowing world. 



CHAPTER IV 


T HE world continued to be otherwise 
uninhabited and to glow rosily for 
almost a fortnight. Ginger’s Aunt Fan 
received a very satisfactory letter from Jim 
Featherstone; the Wolcott Family was as solid 
as Plymouth Rock, and contemporaneous with it. 
Dean Wolcott was a young man of excellent line¬ 
age, character, and achievement—known already, 
at twenty-eight, for unusual and original work in 
his line. He had gone in mildly for athletics at 
Harvard, topped his classes, made two of the best 
clubs. He had been popular in a quiet and dis¬ 
criminating fashion. 

At the end of his letter Aunt Fan’s ex-husband 
allowed himself a bit of facetiousness. “I’ve 
sleuthed the lad down very thoroughly. But— 
Tremont Street and Dos Pozos! Well, it may 
work out, if he likes paprika on his Boston beans!” 

Mrs. Featherstone was extremely pleased with 
this report, but she was likewise thorough, so she 

52 


CORDUROY 


sent out a hurry call for her good friend, Doctor 
Gurney Mayfield. This was the doctor with whom 
they should have supped at Tait’s on the night of 
Ginger’s shabby arrival in San Francisco, and he 
had known Aunt Fan since she was nineteen years 
old and weighed ninety-eight pounds and she would 
always be Miss Fanny to him. He had taken 
care of her first husband through his last illness, 
the more zealously and devotedly because he had 
always considered him a rival, and he had thought 
then, after a decent interval, to renew his suit 
(that was what he called it in his courtly and 
chivalrous heart) but his Miss Fanny, some time 
before his idea of that interval had elapsed, met 
and married Jim Featherstone and went with him 
to New York and lived unhappily ever after. He 
was honestly regretful and soberly elated to have 
her back in California again, and calling on him 
as always for escort and counsel, and now he came 
at once at her summons, driving down from the 
prosperous ranch where he spent his time after 
retiring from a beloved and almost boundless 
practice. 

Ginger was a great favorite with him; he was 
keenly concerned about her choice. The thought 

53 



CORDUROY 


of her marriage had always made him a little 
anxious; she was her father and her mother— 
truly, as her lover had said in his rhapsodic mo¬ 
ment, Scotch granite and Spanish flame. The 
doctor had seen something of the home life of 
Rosalia Valdes and Alexander McVeagh; it had 
been quite lyrically perfect, but very high keyed, 
and he had wondered if it would—or could—last 
down the years. The Spanish woman had a small 
velvet voice, convent-trained, and she sat often at 
the rosewood spinnet which had belonged to her 
mother before her and sang the songs of the 
period. They were very sweet and very senti¬ 
mental and packed with pathos, and some one 
invariably died in the second verse. He remem¬ 
bered that she had loved best one which ran 
something after this fashion— 

Perhaps it is better ive lived as zve did. 

The summer of love together, 

And that one of us tired and lay down to rest. 

Ere the coming of wintry weather — 

and always turned away from the spinnet with 
her dark eyes wet. 

That was exactly what she had done, herself, 

54 



CORDUROY 


and Alexander McVeagh had followed her, ten 
years later, contentedly, for all his devotion to 
his son and daughter. He wasn’t at all sure, in 
his rugged and unadorned version of his for¬ 
bears’ belief, that he should find her again in the 
world to come, but he was very sure that the world 
he was leaving was not much of a world without 
her. Aleck, the son, had been a simple and 
uncomplex creature; all McVeagh. It was the 
girl who combined her father and her mother in 
a baffling and intricate fashion. The doctor 
wondered; it would have been simpler and safer, 
he considered, for Virginia Valdes McVeagh to 
marry a neighboring rancher—even Jerome Ojeda 
—though he lacked a little of the fineness the 
doctor wanted for her—than a Wolcott of Boston. 

Doctor Mayfield’s opportunities for studying 
them together were limited; when they were to¬ 
gether—save at meal times—they took excellent 
care to be alone together. They motored all over 
the surrounding landscape by day and by night— 
it was, by a special dispensation of Providence, a 
time of white and silver moonlight—and tramped 
high into the hills. This in itself was an amazing 
spectacle—Ginger McVeagh afoot; from her tiny 

55 



CORDUROY 


childhood she had never walked except on her 
way to a horse. Dean Wolcott loved walking, 
however, and she loved Dean Wolcott and the 
thing was accomplished. Besides, by an odd and 
dramatically arranged combination of circum¬ 
stances, she had not, for that period, a horse to 
offer him. Aleck’s horse, Felipe, which she usually 
rode, had a wrenched foot, and was turned out, 
and she was riding her own horse Diablo, about 
the business of the ranch. Estrada and his men 
were using all the others, bringing in the stock 
from the farther feeding pastures. Ordinarily, 
she would have borrowed a mount for him from 
a neighbor, but it was a part of the newness and 
strangeness of things to be motoring and tramping 
with her strange new lover. 

At such times, however, as she had to be about 
the business of Dos Pozos, the doctor held satis¬ 
fying converse with Dean Wolcott. He liked 
him heartily, and reported to Aunt Fan as favor¬ 
ably as Jim Featherstone had done, and after 
five days he went north again, satisfied with the 
newcomer as an individual, hopeful about him as 
Ginger’s husband, and Aunt Fan was left alone. 

“Well, it’s ‘the summer of love’ they’re living 

56 



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now, Miss Fanny,” he told her at leaving. “We 
can only hope it’ll be big enough to see them 
through 'the coming of wintry weather 9 99 But 
he shook his head. Since he had given up the 
patching and mending of bodies he had given a 
lot of thought to minds and souls and tempera¬ 
ments; he was rather well up on them. 

Ginger jumped up from the dinner table one 
day and flew to the telephone. “I must get you a 
horse,” she said, excitedly. “I don’t know what 
I’ve been thinking about!” Then she colored 
hotly and suddenly; she knew very well what she 
had been thinking about. “You’ve been here 
nearly two weeks and we haven’t had a ride to¬ 
gether, and Friday’s the big day!” She gave her 
number and stood waiting, the receiver in her 
hand. 

“But—look here,” said Dean Wolcott. “I don’t 
ride, you know. I’ve told you that before, haven’t 
I?” 

He had told her several times, but it simply 
didn’t register. For a man—a hundred per cent 
man, who had been a soldier and her brother’s 
comrade, who was, above all, her man*—not to 

57 



CORDUROY 


ride was—ridiculous. He was using a phrase 
which didn’t mean anything; he probably didn’t 
care especially about riding (Boston was without 
doubt a wretched place in which to ride) or didn’t 
ride especially well; city men didn’t as a rule. 
But to say he didn’t ride — She was speaking into 
the telephone. “Hello! Hello! Oh, ’Rome, is 
that you? How are you? . . . ’Rome, can you 
lend us a horse? Felipe's turned out with a bad 
foot, and we haven’t a thing for Dean to ride. 
. . . Oh, fine, ’Rome! Thanks a lot! Bring him 
over with you Friday morning, will you?” She 
came back to the table radiant. “ ’Rome says 
he’s got just the thing for you; I knew he’d help 
us out.” 

(’Rome Ojeda had heard, as all the countryside 
had heard, of Ginger’s eastern suitor; it was the 
chief topic in a land which was ordinarily bare of 
conversational thrills, but he had taken it quite 
coolly. He wasn’t, he had been quoted as saying, 
“worrying none.” Ginger hadn’t given him any 
thought. He had not, to be sure, telephoned to 
her or ridden over with congratulations as others 
had done, but he had been gay and good-natured 
when they met up on horseback.) 

58 



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Dean looked at her quizzically. He was begin¬ 
ning, in the last day or two, to look at her with 
his mind instead of his heart, and he had made 
several discoveries. One of these was that she 
was as high-handed and autocratic as a feudal 
duchess; it was not only that she always wanted 

and took her own way—she was unaware that 

* 

there was any other way to want, or to take. But, 
up to that time, he was not worrying any more 
than ’Rome Ojeda was. It was picturesque, it 
was pretty—her high-handedness. 

The night before the “big day” she refused to 
walk or motor or even sit on the veranda, but told 
him a resolute good night at eight o’clock. “Ling 
will call you at three, and breakfast’s at three- 
thirty.” 

“We attack at dawn, I see,” said Dean, steering 
her cleverly into an alcove and out of her aunt’s 
range of vision. “Then, if my evening is to end 
at eight instead of ten or eleven, I certainly con¬ 
sider myself entitled to something in the way of 
recompense.” He swept her into his arms and 
kissed her. 

“Honey,” said Ginger, persuasively, “let me 

59 



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go! And you must get to sleep yourself—-we’ve 
got a big day ahead of us!” 

“My dear, I’ve told you several times, though 
you’ve seemed not to listen to me, that I’m no 
horseman. I rather think you’d better let me off, 
to-morrow; it’s highly probable that I’d cut a 
sorry figure in the saddle.” 

Ginger drew back in his arms, wide-eyed. “But 
you’ll have to ride, Dean! You couldn’t possibly 
drive the car—we go by trail and straight over 
the hills—and you couldn’t walk.” 

“Why not?” 

“Because it’ll be a forty-mile trip, and—why, 
it wouldn’t be safe, goose! You are a tenderfoot, 
aren’t you? The steers are all right when you’re 
on horseback, but they’d rush over you in a wink, 
afoot.” 

“Forty miles,” said Dean, thoughtfully. “It 
sounds rather a large order, Ginger, dear. Sup¬ 
pose I don’t go?” 

“Suppose you don’t— go?” She stared at him 
and her voice was cold with astonishment. “Why 
—what’ll everybody think?” 

“I don’t understand you.” 

“What’ll everybody think about you, if you 

60 



CORDUROY 


don’t go—when it’s my ranch and my cattle, and 
everybody coming back here for the big feed at 
night and the dance?” she wanted hotly to know. 

Dean Wolcott colored slowly. “I fail to see 
where it is any one’s affair but my own—and 
yours, of course. If we decide that it is wiser-” 

“But we haven’t and we aren’t going to!” she 
flamed out at him. “Oh, can’t you see how it is? 
Everybody, Estrada and his men and all the 
neighbors and people I’ve known ever since I was 
born, think it’s funny and queer, my being— 
engaged to you. They think easterners are just 
like foreigners . I did, too,” she was gentle for 
an instant, “before you came! And if you ditch 
the ride, and just sit around the house and wait 
for the big feed and the dance, they’ll say—any¬ 
how, ’Rome Ojeda’ll say—that you’re bluffed out. 
’Rome Ojeda’s been trying to make me say I’d 
marry him ever since I was fifteen; he' 11 say 
you’re—afraid.” 

He did not speak at once, and Ginger, watching 
him, breathing fast after her long speech, saw that 
he was looking a lot like the other Mr. Wolcott. 
“And what will you say, Ginger, if I tell you that 
I won’t ride ? What will you say ?” He was very 

61 




CORDUROY 


quiet about it. “It doesn’t matter in the least to 
me what a lot of ranchers and cowboys think or 
say—Ojeda or any one else. But—what will you 
say?” 

Even a resemblance to the cousin who had 
convoyed him disapprovingly across the continent 
made her truculent, and his voice was even more 
like the other than his expression. “I’ll say you 
must —” she caught herself midway, aghast to 
find how nearly she had said the unforgivable 
thing. She came close to him again and put her 
arms around his neck and clasped her hands 
behind his head, and pulled his grave face down 
to her. “I won’t have to say anything, because I 
know you’re going to do it for me—aren’t you, 
Dean— dearest?” 

It was the first time she had ever, alone and un¬ 
assisted—uninvited—kissed him upon the mouth. 
He caught her hard against him with a strength 
which seemed ready for any feats of prowess. 
“I’ll ride—anything—anywhere—you ask me,” he 
said, unsteadily. 

Ling called him at three o’clock. It was dark 
and unbelievably cold, and he dressed himself 
with stiff fingers and went heavy-eyed into the 

6 2 



CORDUROY 


dining room. He felt old and jaded and de¬ 
pressed; unhappily conscious of all the strength 
which hadn’t yet come back to him. 

Ginger was there before him, dressed in her 
oldest riding things, a worn old Stetson on her 
head, a scarlet bandanna tied, cowboy fashion, 
about her neck, and she was warm and glowing. 
She looked as if she had just emerged from the 
conclusion of their ardent little scene of the night 
before; Dean felt as if it were something which 
had happened to him in his youth, and as if his 
youth had passed a long time ago. He had no 
appetite, and could barely manage a cup of coffee, 
and he was almost annoyed with her for eating 
with excellent relish. They spoke in low tones, 
remembering Aunt Fan’s earnest pleas that she 
should not be wakened, but before they left the 
table there was a pounding of hoofs and a shout 
from the front of the house. 

“There’s ’Rome!” said Ginger, jumping up. 
“Come along!” She ran out onto the veranda and 
he followed her slowly. 

’Rome Ojeda had ridden in from his ranch the 
night before and stayed with Ginger’s nearest 
neighbor, and his horses—the one he rode and the 

63 



CORDUROY 


one he was leading—were quite fresh. He swung 
himself to the ground, dropped the reins, pulled 
off a buckskin gauntlet and strode over to Dean, 
holding out his hand. “Mighty pleased to make 
your acquaintance,” he said, displaying very 
briefly his white smile in his brown face. “Here’s 
your mount, Mr. Wolcott,” he nodded toward the 
red roan. 

“Very good of you,” said Dean, stiffly. He felt 
stiff, body and brain, aching for sleep, cramped 
and cold. 

“Oh—the lunches!” cried Ginger. “Almost 
forgot them!” She bolted into the house. 

Dean Wolcott looked at his horse and hunted 
wearily through his mind for something sapient to 
say about him. The fact was that he had not 
been astride a horse six times in his twenty-eight 
years. Others of the Wolcott family rode—sev¬ 
eral of his friends rode; it had merely happened 
that he had gone in, instead, in what leisure he 
had from school and college and later, the office, 
for tennis and golf and walking trips. He had 
very nearly made tackle in his junior year; three 
years on the squad. Now he would have traded 

64 



CORDUROY 


all these glad activities for a good working knowl¬ 
edge of horseflesh. 

One of Ginger’s men brought up her Diablo; 
there were a dozen riders in the distance, coming 
nearer at a swinging lope. 

The vaquero looked at the roan. “I see you 
got new horse, Meester Ojeda, no?” 

“Yeh,” ’Ojeda nodded. “Mr. Wolcott’s ridin’ 
him to-day.” Then he said, very slowly, “Only 
been rode a coup’la saddles.” 

Dean Wolcott pulled himself up. “What do 
you call him, Ojeda?” 

’Rome Ojeda rolled a cigarette. “I call him 
‘Snort,’ ” he said. “He mostly does.” 

Ginger’s suitor walked down the shallow steps 
and went up to the horse with outstretched hand. 
“Hello, Snort, old chap ! Do you-” 

The animal pulled back sharply, flinging up his 
head with a sound vividly descriptive of his name, 
and ’Rome Ojeda grinned, enjoyingly. “Aside 
from that, he’s as gentle as a kitten,” he drawled. 
“Look here, Mr. Wolcott—where’s your spurs?” 

“Oh, I sha’n’t need spurs,” said Dean, easily. 
Just as Ginger had disliked his correct cousin in 
less than five minutes of acquaintance, so now did 

65 





CORDUROY 


he detest this brown and beautiful ’Rome Ojeda 
with his appalling bigness, his flashing smile, and 
his crude sureness. He loathed the whole com¬ 
monplace, rubber-stamp situation in which he 
found himself—competent wild westerner, eastern 
tenderfoot, cattle-queen heroine, mob scene of 
cow-punchers; it was like finding himself placed 
on the printed page of a tawdry story—like seeing 
himself on the screen in a cheap and stupid moving 
picture; like seeing himself in the role of unwitting 
comedian. He knew that, unescapably, he was 
about to be made to appear ridiculous; and that 
was a thing no Wolcott ever was. They had 
reverses, disappointments; they were ill, they 
suffered, they died; they were never ridiculous. 
And now Dean Wolcott, whose mother kept his 
Congressional Medal and his Croix de Guerre in 
the box with her delicate handkerchiefs, so that, 
with no parade of them, she could see and touch 
them every day, was about to afford rude mirth to 
yokels. 

He went again and firmly to his mount, clutched 
at the mane and the reins, got one foot into the 
jerking stirrup, scrambled and clawed his way up. 
The horse, simultaneously with these motions on 

66 



CORDUROY 


his part, noisily demonstrating the aptness of his 
cognomen, did incredibly swift and sudden things 
with his head, his neck, all four of his legs and his 
torso. Dean Wolcott, just as the riders came 
loping up and Ginger stepped out on to the 
veranda with the packets of lunch in her hands, 
rose clear of the saddle, appeared to hang an 
instant in mid-air, sailed over the head of his 
steed and fell heavily to the sun-baked earth. 



CHAPTER V 


I T was thus that Virginia Valdes McVeagh, 
sole owner and proprietor of Dos Pozos, 
saddle-wise from babyhood, cool and com¬ 
petent as any man among them, presented her 
betrothed to the friends of her youth, to her 
world. 

Her betrothed, in those swift seconds between 
his departure from the saddle and his arrival upon 
the ground, hoped fervently that he might have 
the good fortune to break his neck, but it ap¬ 
peared immediately that he had not broken any¬ 
thing whatever. He was dizzy, jarred and bruised 
and lamed, but he was entirely intact, as he curtly 
made clear to ’Rome Ojeda. ’Rome Ojeda, his 
white smile flashing, was first to rush to the rescue. 

Dean Wolcott picked himself up and brushed 
himself off, resolutely keeping his eyes away from 
the veranda and Ginger; he felt he could bear all 
the rest of it if she would only keep away from 
him. She was there, however, almost as soon as 

68 


CORDUROY 


Rome was, her face as pale as possible beneath 
its brown warmth. She wanted breathlessly and 
with unashamed anguish in her voice to know if 
he was hurt, but directly she saw—and heard— 
that he was not, the color rushed hotly back into 
her cheeks and she turned shortly away on a 
spurred heel. 

“A little too much hawse, maybe,” said ’Rome 
Ojeda, smoothly. “Change with Mr. Wolcott, 
somebody with a quieter cayuse!” 

Two or three of the riders promptly dis¬ 
mounted and came forward, but Dean Wolcott 
shook his head. “Thank you,” he said, stub¬ 
bornly, “I shall ride this horse or none.” He 
sounded blatantly dramatic to his own ears. Why 
hadn’t he laughed it off, made determined comedy 
of the situation, made them laugh with him, in¬ 
stead of at him? He hated himself for the bom¬ 
bastic attitude he had struck; he hated ’Rome 
Ojeda and his quivering red roan; he hated his 
own fatuous folly of weakening the evening 
before under Ginger’s lips and promising her to 
make this ghastly fiasco; he was not at all sure 
that he didn’t hate Ginger. 

Old Estrada came forward, respectful, help- 

69 



CORDUROY 


ful. Dean was fitted out with spurs and quirt, 
the horse was firmly held until the rider was 
solidly in the saddle, his feet braced, the reins 
in a tense grip. But now Snort, as if he had had 
his little joke, conducted himself in what was, 
for him, a staid and dignified manner; he 
pranced, he curvetted, he tossed his handsome 
head, but he made no effort to dislodge his pas¬ 
senger, and Dean, his head aching dully, his 
aching body intolerably jolted and jarred, fol¬ 
lowed in the wake of the procession. 

The old mayordomo, riding beside him, ex¬ 
plained. They were to drive two hundred and 
forty steers—two-year-olds that he and his men 
had been bringing in from the remote pastures 
—to the shipping point—approximately eighteen 
miles. On the way back they would collect close 
to two hundred yearlings and bring them back 
to the main ranch. It sounded, on the Spaniard’s 
lips, as simple as hailing a taxicab and driving 
down Tremont Street. 

The other riders, Ginger among them, had 
spurred ahead. Dean could see through the 
steadily brightening light that the vaqueros were 

70 



CORDUROY 


opening the gates of the great corrals, releasing 
sluggish, slow-moving, brown streams. 

Estrada said softly in his heavily accented Eng¬ 
lish. “Eef you kip near to me, I weel tell you 
all, Serior” 

“Thank you,” said Dean, civilly. “You are 
very kind.” 

He was very kind, the black-eyed old mayor - 
domo; there was no scorn in his hawklike gaze, 
nothing but the most respectful desire to be of 
service. Let others forget that here among 
them rode—however clumsily—the friend and 
comrade of his young serior, Alejandrino Mc- 
Veagh; Vincente Estrada would not forget. 

They came up with the other riders, with the 
brown stream. It was not sluggish now; there 
were waves, breakers. Brown, twisting, turning 
bodies, tossing horns, wild eyes; ceaseless bellow¬ 
ing; dust. Ginger and her vaqueros and her 
neighbors rode on the edges of the stream, shout¬ 
ing, waving their sombreros, now spurring ahead 
to guard a gate, now in sudden, swallow-swift 
pursuit of a bolting steer, passing him, turning 
him, heading him back into the herd. 

Dean Wolcott tried to detach himself from 


7i 



CORDUROY 


the spectacle, to regard it objectively—something 
whose like he had never seen before, and never 
would see—but of course, he told himself, after 
he married Ginger he would often see this sort 
of thing. She would, he supposed, insist on com¬ 
ing back to her ranch occasionally, unless he 
could persuade her to sell it. He sought to see 
her in the frame and with the background of 
Boston; it was actually the first time, since that 
moment when they stood midway on Aleck’s 
bridge, that he had done this. The realization 
came sharply that he had been looking into a 
kaleidoscope for two glowing and highly colored 
weeks. On his summer vacations, when he was 
a small and quiet child, he had visited at an 
uncle’s Connecticut farm, and—better than the 
out-of-doors—he had loved the cool dimness of 
the big “Front Room.” 

Being a gentle and trustworthy child he was 
allowed the freedom of it. He might turn the 
pages of the ancient album, lift the conch shells 
from the whatnot in the corner and listen to the 
imprisoned sound of the sea, climb carefully 
upon a chair to inspect the wax flowers and the 
hair wreaths framed and hanging on the w r alls; 

72 



CORDUROY 


best of all he loved sitting on a slippery hair¬ 
cloth sofa, his eyes glued to the tiny window 
of the kaleidoscope, his soul warm with the joy 
of color and design. There was always, he re¬ 
membered now, a distinct effort of his will neces¬ 
sary to remove his reveling eye, to take it away 
from crimson and jade and orange and ultra- 
marine and deep purple, and return it to the grays 
and browns and drabs of the material world. 
And the time had come again, he told himself 
grimly, his head aching dully, his muscles aching 
sharply, to take his eye away from the kaleido¬ 
scope. 

He was following Estrada into the thick of 
it; he was surrounded by the brown bodies; 
he was stifled by the brown dust which rose over 
him. The sun was high, now, and he had stopped 
being chilled, but he was miserable in so many 
other ways that he was not able to be thankful. 
He wondered dully, disgusted, why the power¬ 
ful creatures, horned, capable of splendid battle, 
allowed themselves to be driven by a twentieth 
part of their number of men, herded docilely down 
to their death. 

“Ur-r-ra, ur-r-ra, ur-rrrra!” said Estrada softly 

73 




CORDUROY 


to them, “Ur-r-ra !”—and they gave way before 
him, backing, whirling, pawing at the earth, the 
bolder ones rolling their red eyes, blowing futile 
defiance through their dust-grimed nostrils. Now 
and then a couple of them, truculent, locked 
horns for an instant, made a little whirlpool of 
private strife in the brown stream, but at Es¬ 
trada’s shout, his whirling quirt, his swung som¬ 
brero, they gave up; they went on again in their 
sacrificial procession. Estrada, what time he 
rode close enough to him and the steers were 
not bellowing too loudly, gave him bits of in¬ 
formation. They would be loaded into the cattle 
cars at noon, if all went well; they would not 
reach San Francisco for two days or three, per¬ 
haps; yes, the railroad company was obliged to 
water them—Estrada really did not know exactly 
what the law was, but there was a law, he was 
comfortably sure. Yes —those were “loco” 
steers; the sehor would do well to keep his dis¬ 
tance from them—they might be sufficiently loco 
to hook his horse, and his horse, unhappily, was 
not entirely trustworthy. The ones with the huge 
and hideous swellings at the sides of their heads 
had “lumpy jaw”; it was hard to tell the sehor 

74 



CORDUROY 


exactly what caused it—a foxtail wedged between 
the teeth, perhaps, made the beginning. No, he 
shrugged, there was no cure that he had ever 
heard of; if it could be taken in the beginning— 
but it was never taken in the beginning. No, it 
did not hurt the meat, except that, as the sehor 
saw, the lumpy-jawed steers were always poor; 
he thought—he was not certain of this, but.he 
had heard that they went to feed the prisoners 
in State’s Prison. This was a very fine herd; 
the senorita had excellent feeding pastures; she 
was a remarkable judge of stock. And she was 
very kind, the senorita; the senor could see for 
himself that she allowed the cattle to go at a 
walk; she would not allow them to be driven 
with dogs or with whips. That was very kind, 
and it was also very sensible; dogs made them 
nervous and made them hurry too much; they 
lost profitable pounds in transit; and the packers 
did not like you to use whips—they made bruises 
on the meat. Was not the senorita a wonderful 
horsewoman? He himself had seen her riding 
after the herd, just as she was riding to-day, at the 
age of seven. A proud man, the father of 
Senorita Ginger, the old Senor Alejandro Mc- 

75 



CORDUROY 


Veagh; a proud family. He let his raven-black 
eyes rest upon his companion for an instant. If 
the sehor would let himself go loose in the sad¬ 
dle, he would find himself riding in greater com¬ 
fort. 

Dean Wolcott tried it; he tried it faithfully. 
He was willing and eager to try anything which 
would alleviate his wretchedness, but there was 
no looseness in him anywhere. Everything was 
taut, shrieking with painful tension. If he leaned 
forward, if he leaned back, if he shifted the 
weight from the stirrups to the saddle, from the 
saddle to the stirrups, it was worse in another 
strained or bruised or blistered locality. He 
knew that his stirrups were too short but he 
would not dismount to change them; he doubted 
if he could get on again. “How many miles have 
we come, Estrada?” He knew they must be 
almost at their destination, but it would be a 
comfort to hear it from the Spaniard’s lips. 

Estrada considered. “Oh, maybe seex mile, 
Sehor. Maybe leetle more; maybe not so 
moach.” 

“Then we have twelve still to go?” 

“Well, we call eet eighteen mile from Dos 

76 



CORDUROY 


Pozos, Senor. The time pass very queek now, 
Senor” 

But it seemed to the senor that no day in his 
life, even in the trenches, had ever been so long. 
It was hot, now, blazingly, glaringly hot; it was 
incredible that he had ever been shivering. 

It would last for hours yet, this personal misery, 
this unendurable monotony; brown, twisting, turn¬ 
ing bodies, tossing horns, wild eyes; ceaseless bel¬ 
lowing; dust—stifling, choking, blinding dust; the 
smell of sweating hides. 

Shortly before eleven o’clock they took their 
lunches out of their pockets and ate, in the saddle, 
but at any rate they were stationary. The va- 
queros held the herd, loosely, in a shallow valley 
where there was water for them. The neighbor¬ 
ing ranchers rode up with Ginger and hoped 
heartily that Mr. Wolcott was all right after his 
spill, and they were cordial and kind. As a matter 
of fact, though he did not dream it, they were very 
well aware of his plight, and they were feeling a 
good deal of respect for his sporting endurance. 
The word had passed more than once, that morn¬ 
ing—“Pretty game bird, that boy of Ginger’s!” 
—“Say, that feller’s not quittin’ any, is he?— 

77 



CORDUROY 


sickly lookin’ as he is, too!” A couple of the 
older men had sharply criticized ’Rome Ojeda 
for putting a stranger and a guest on a horse like 
the red roan, and they wondered at Ginger's 
permitting it. 

The girl rode close to her lover, bright-eyed 
and glowing and spoke softly. “All right, Dean? 
Are you all right?” 

He told her he was all right. (Could he sit 
like an old woman at a summer resort and 
catalogue the number and character of his aches 
and strains?) He swallowed one sandwich with 
difficulty; no one had thought to bring a drinking 
cup, and besides, the steers had hopelessly mud¬ 
died the creek. Well, they would be at Santa Rita 
in about an hour. 

Dean studied Ginger and Ojeda and the rest 
of them with angry and grudging admiration, 
their boundless endurance, their lazy confidence, 
their utter oneness with their mounts. Then, 
honestly disgusted with himself, he set to work 
to see the thing as it was, not in its interrelation¬ 
ship to his own unfitness. He told himself un¬ 
sparingly that he was like the type of American 
who goes to a foreign land and talks disparag- 

78 



CORDUROY 


ingly about the foreigners; his sense of balance 
came back. He, Dean Wolcott, was the failure 
here. These people were integral parts of the 
virile picture; they fitted strongly into the high 
brown hills and the blue mountains far beyond, 
into the wide dry valleys and the deep canons: he 
belonged on the pavement, in the shadow of 
grave buildings, art galleries, quiet clubs, dig¬ 
nified offices. It was absurd to let himself be 
overcome with such a sense of bitterness and re¬ 
bellion; suppose he didn’t and couldn’t make good 
here, according to their crude and simple stand¬ 
ards? Could they make good in Boston, accord¬ 
ing to his? He was weary enough to begin to 
quote, bromidically to himself. East was east 
and west was west, and never the twain— Ah, 
but the twain did, occasionally, brilliantly, satis- 
fyingly, as he and Ginger had met on Aleck’s 
bridge, the good, simple Aleck who had opened 
a window into a new world for him, in the 
trenches; who had given him Ginger. 

He looked at her through the blazing and 
merciless sunlight, blinking as he had done on 
that first morning. She was in corduroy, worn, 
rubbed, dusty corduroy, as were almost all of the 

79 



CORDUROY 


men. It was the only wear, in this lusty land, 
apparently. Corduroy; corde du roi: he smiled 
inwardly; once, long ago, wider waled and softer, 
and in delicate hues, kings had favored it; wine- 
red, emerald-green, royal-purple, it had glowed 
in courts. . . . Now it had come down in the 
world—drab, utilitarian . . . dust-colored, dust- 
covered. . . . 

They reached the shipping point at last; there 
was a hectic half hour of getting the steers across 
the concrete highway; they advanced upon it 
warily, putting their noses down to it, snorting, 
pawing, holding back against the pressure of the 
herd behind them; then they went with a rush, 
over, up and down, wild, terrified; plunging, slip¬ 
ping. Some one told Dean, curtly, to tie his horse 
and go out on foot on to the highway to stop the 
automobiles. It was exquisite relief and exquisite 
torture to be walking; it was ludicrous to feel a 
sudden access of power and authority, holding up 
his hand like a traffic policeman, seeing the cars 
slam on their brakes and obey him, to have people 
lean out and ask him questions about the cattle. 
He was busily useful for thirty minutes; he was 

80 



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doing his job as well as any man of them. Then 
he was hauling himself unhappily into the saddle 
again, and they were off. 

“Got to make time while we can,” said Ginger, 
“before we pick up the yearlings. Let’s go!” 

She was away at a swinging lope, and Snort, 
without notification from his rider, went after 
her. In spite of shrieking muscles and weeping 
blisters, there was a keen sense of exultation about 
it; he had balance, equilibrium; he was able to 
conceive of liking this sort of thing, loving it . . . 
dominion. . . . 

’Rome Ojeda passed them, drew his horse back 
on his haunches, waited for them. “Well, goin’ 
to make a hand with the yearlings, Mr. Wolcott? 
That was easy this mornin’; they’d been moved 
two—three times, those steers. These young-uns 
are different.” 

“He sure is going to make a hand, ’Rome,” 
said Ginger, confidently. “It’ll take all of us, 
and then some!” 

He saw, presently, why it would take all of 
them, why he must strive, in his awkward and 
unready fashion, to “make a hand.” The young 
steers were timid, suspicious, quarrelsome; stupid, 

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quick to get into a blind and unreasoning panic 
—brown streaks of speed when they broke away 
from the bunch. Ginger was here, there, every¬ 
where, swallow-swift on Diablo, darting after a 
fugitive—up a sheer bank, down a steep canon, 
hanging low out of her saddle, Indian-fashion, to 
dodge a dangerous branch. Estrada had had to 
give up his duties as guide; he was in the thick 
of the job. Dean rode alone, and Snort, who, by 
some miracle of mercy, had been mild and tract¬ 
able earlier in the day, now developed temper 
and temperament. Any sort of riding, after the 
long hours in the saddle, was active discomfort; 
riding Snort was torture. 

A dog ran out of a ranch house and barked; 
the herd, which had settled down for half an 
hour into something like order and calm, started 
milling; round and round, like an eddying whirl¬ 
pool, trying to turn, to start back; there was the 
sharp sound of a fence giving way—they were 
into the rancher’s orchard, they were into his 
field, and then over his hill—they were off and 
away. 

Thundering hoofs; shouts, curses; Ginger went 
by him in a furious flash. “Dean! What’s the 

82 



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matter with you? Make a hand, can’t you? 
Make a hand!” 

He made a hand, of sorts. He was part and 
parcel of the noisy, breathless chaos. He was 
never to know by what magic he remained in or 
near the saddle; certainly there was little left 
of power or volition in his racked and tired body. 
They were back at last upon the road; they were 
moving steadily forward again. ’Rome Ojeda 
came up to him. “Well, you sure are makin’ a 
hand,’’ he said, genially. Dust had settled thickly 
on his face; it made his smile whiter and more 
flashing than ever by contrast. “But we got’a 
watch ’em, still! They’re sure one wild bunch! 
They—” he broke off abruptly at Ginger’s cry— 

“Dean! Dean! Head him off! Get him! 
Get him!” 

A lone young steer had sneaked away from 
his side of the herd, from under his inattentive 
nose, and was galloping clumsily off across a 
field. 

“ ’Atta boy!” said ’Rome Ojeda, loudly. “Go 
get ’em! Dig in your spurs! Ride ’em, cow¬ 
boy !” 

Doggedly, bitterly, he struck his spurs into his 

83 



CORDUROY 


horse: they cleared the edge of the road at a 
bound, they were after the steer, up with him, 
beyond him, turning him: he was loping back to 
his fellows. Dean’s head felt light and strange; 
it had ceased to belong to his body. 

“ Atta boy!” sang out Ojeda. 

Estrada was smiling: Ginger was smiling, too. 
It was the first time she had smiled at him, in that 
fashion, all day. He was going to fall off of 
Snort presently, any moment now, simply because 
he couldn’t sit him any longer, but, meanwhile, 
he’d turned the steer. He was making a hand. 
By some convulsive and involuntary motion of his 
aching leg muscles he dug the spurs into Snort 
once more. Instantly the horse, snorting, trump¬ 
eting, had bolted with him. He didn’t care, 
especially; let him take him fast and far, away 
from the dissembled scorn of Ginger’s world, 
away from ’Rome Ojeda’s cool appraisal, away 
from Ginger. He would hold on a little longer; 
then he would let go. He would hold on; he 
couldn’t stop Snort—there was nothing left in 
his arms to stop him with—but he would hold 
on. Hold on . . . hold on. . . . He thought, 

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CORDUROY 


presently, that he must be saying it aloud, but it 
was Ojeda’s voice. 

“Hold on! Hold on! I’m a-comin’! Hold 
on!” There was, on the surface, hearty reassur¬ 
ance in it; underneath, he knew, there was sneer¬ 
ing scorn. He came up with him, nearer, nearer, 
exactly like a rescuer in a wild west film, came 
abreast of him, reached out, caught hold of Snort, 
pulled him to a standstill, turned back his head 
so that he could not buck. “He sure was goin’ 
wicked,” he said, gently. “He sure was goin’ 
wicked.” 

If Ginger had seen it, she gave no sign. Es¬ 
trada came back to ride beside him. “Ur-r-ra!” 
he said soothingly to the wild young steers. 
“Ur-rrr-ra I Ur-rr-ra!” 

No one spoke to Dean Wolcott and he spoke 
to no one. He was too much occupied with his 
black and seething hatred of ’Rome Ojeda. He 
had been rescued, moving-picture style; moving- 
picture style he was hating his rival, his rival 
who had shown him up; he was wishing passion¬ 
ately that he might get even with him. He 
groped for his sense of humor, of fitness. He, 
Dean Wolcott, hating this cow-puncher, planning 

85 



CORDUROY 


to be revenged upon him— His sense of humor 
was gone, lost, swallowed up in the dust. Now 
they were back again in the old monotony; brown, 
twisting, turning bodies, tossing horns, wild eyes; 
ceaseless bellowing; the stench of hot and sweat¬ 
ing hides; dust; enveloping, smothering dust. 
Ginger, save for her scarlet neckerchief and her 
scarlet cheeks, was covered with dust, dust-cov¬ 
ered, dust-colored; dust-brown. Corduroy; what 
was it that plants and animals took on from their 
surroundings? (Was it possible that he was 
beginning to forget again?) What was it? He 
had learned it when he was a child. It was gone, 
though. No! Protective resemblance! That 
was what it was, and that was what Ginger’s in¬ 
evitable corduroy was; it was the color of the 
dust, the blinding, stifling dust of this parched 
land of summer; protective resemblance; dust; 
corduroy. 

“Senor, we are here! We are arrive’ at home, 
Senor! Do you not weesh to get down?” It 
was Estrada, dismounted, standing beside him, 
and they were just below the veranda of the old 
adobe at Dos Pozos. “Senor, are you seek?” 

He was not sick, he told him. (He was really 

86 



CORDUROY 


not even suffering any longer; it was some time, 
now, since there had been any feeling at all in 
his arms or his legs.) “Yes, I wish to get down,” 
he said with dignity. He wanted to keep his 
dignity; ’Rome Ojeda was watching him, and 
Ginger was watching him, and the ranchers were 
watching him. 

“Ees a long, hard day, Sehor” said Estrada, 
softly. 

It was almost dusk now, and they had set out 
soon after dawn. “Oh—somewhat,” said Dean 
Wolcott, jauntily. “Rather long, of course, but 
very interesting.” Then he got down from his 
horse and stood for a moment, smiling uncertainly 
at the old Spaniard before he dropped to the 
warm earth for the second time that day. This 
time he had fainted. 



CHAPTER VI 


G INGER could understand bullets; she 
could understand a broken arm or leg or 
collar bone; a broken neck was entirely 
comprehensible to her. But she could not under¬ 
stand fainting; not, above all, a man’s fainting. 

As soon as she was sure that he was not dead 
(she had heard of sudden death by heart failure) 
she was not aware of any feeling but deep chagrin. 
She did not follow when he was helped into the 
house and to his room by Estrada and ’Rome 
Ojeda; she sent old Manuela to him but she did 
not go herself. She went instead to her room and 
got out of her dust-grimed riding things and under 
a cold shower, and into one of the evening frocks 
which her Aunt Fan had made her buy. It was 
the scarlet one, and she piled her dark hair high 
and put in her carved ivory comb which had come 
down to her from her Valdes grandmother, and 
put a red flower behind her ear, and regarded her¬ 
self in her small mirror with hearty and entire 

88 


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satisfaction. Not three times in her life had she 
ever dressed herself so painstakingly, or been so 
pleased with the result. 

She went to the dining room and looked over 
the lavish supper and summoned in her guests, and 
after the riotous meal she started the dance with 
Rome Ojeda, and she was dancing with him 
for the fourth time in an hour when her aunt 
came into the room and called her. 

Mrs. Featherstone told her that she was an¬ 
noyed beyond words, but this seemed hardly a 
correct statement of her case, as she proceeded 
to emit sharp staccato showers of them. She 
called her niece among other things a heartless 
young savage and asked her what she thought 
of herself, eating and dancing and flirting like 
that, when her sweetheart was sick and suffering. 
Ginger, as a matter of fact, thought very well 
of herself that evening; she was as hard and 
bright as polished metal and no more tender. 
Presently—in the morning, perhaps—she would 
be wretchedly aware of the crudeness and cruelty 
of her attitude; now she was unyielding. 

“Oh, does he want to see me?” She shrugged, 
and when she did that she was all Valdes. Dean 

89 



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Wolcott would have been reminded of a Goya 
painting, but Aunt Fan was too angry to be 
reminded of anything. 

“Of course he wants to see you! Why 
shouldn’t he?” 

“Did he ask you to bring me?” Her eyes were 
fathomless. 

“No, he didn’t; he has too much pride, of 
course, but-” 

“Pride!” said Ginger, bitterly. “I shouldn’t 
think he’d have much pride left, after to-day!” 

“Now, that just shows how childish and 
ridiculous your standards are,” her aunt scolded. 
“Just because he happens not to be able to ride 
like a buckeroo—because he’s lived a different 
sort of life-” 

“You don’t understand,” said Ginger. Her 
voice was adamant, too. “You don’t understand 
at all. Well—I’ll see him, for a minute.” She 
nodded to a hovering partner and went down the 
long corridor to Aleck’s room. Her aunt did 
not understand and she did not understand her¬ 
self, all that was swaying her. It wasn’t alone 
that her lover had cut a sorry figure on horse¬ 
back; it was that she, Ginger McVeagh, feudal 

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CORDUROY 


lady of the range, princess of the blood in the 
eyes of her henchmen, had said, in effect—“There 
is no one among you all fit to be my mate; I 
must have a stranger, an easterner, some one 
higher and finer. Now I have found him! Wait 
until you see him—wait, and behold why I have 
chosen him.” They had waited and they had be¬ 
held, and now, she knew, for all their civility 
about it and their good-natured inquiries about 
him they were amused and amazed that she should 
have picked Dean Wolcott; they were aghast, as 
she was aghast. 

Old Manuela was seated beside the bed but she 
rose at once and waddled out into the hall. She 
had been waiting and watching anxiously for her 
mistress for an hour, and she was sure, in her 
simple heart, that everything would be all right 
now. 

The big room was only dimly lit, but she could 
see how shockingly white and ill he looked. 
Nevertheless, it roused in her no whispering 
gentleness this time, as it had done on Christmas 
Day; healthy young animal that she was—she 
had taken mumps and measles and chicken pox on 

9i 



CORDUROY 


her feet and never spent an hour of daylight in 
bed in all her life—it rather repelled her. 

He opened his eyes in time to catch something 
of her mood in her expression and his own face 
stiffened. “You shouldn’t have bothered to come; 
I'm quite all right. Manuela and your aunt have 
looked after me.” Again, he blinked his tired 
eyes a little, as he had at his first sight of her, 
months ago; she was too bright, too vivid, too 
glowing. 

It would not have been difficult to recapture 
the magic of the night before; if Ginger had 
dropped to her knees and kissed him as she had 
kissed him then—if Dean had managed a ragged 
sentence of regret for disappointing her—’Rome 
Ojeda would have waited long for his next dance. 
But instead, she stood looking down at his pallor 
and limpness and he lay looking up at her scarlet 
cheeks and her incredible vigor, and the moment 
got away from them. Presently, Ginger hoped 
with an edge in her voice that he’d have a good 
night, and Dean trusted, with ice in his, that she’d 
have a good time. 

They did their best, in the week that followed. 
Dean was limping about by noon and Ginger 

92 



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staying at home to be with him, and they were 
gentle with each other, but it scared and sobered 
them to see that it wasn’t any use. It was as 
if they had been blowing bubbles together, lovely, 
shimmering iridescent ones, which had fallen 
and burst, and now they were trying to gather 
up the little damp spots which were left and 
make billowy, floating bubbles out of them again. 

The truth was that they had arrived, simul¬ 
taneously, at the third stage of their knowledge 
of each other. The first had been her breathless 
reverence for him, the messenger from her dead 
brother, the worn young visitant from another 
world, and his dazed recognition of her warm 
and vital beauty; next—when they had come 
together on Aleck’s bridge and in the fortnight 
following—she had made him into a saint and 
fairy prince and lover, and he—his senses smitten 
with loveliness, his returning strength and virility 
leaping to meet hers, leaning on it, mingling with 
it; now they were regarding each other quite 
clearly, with detachment. She saw a rather pale 
and precise young man, obviously out of drawing 
in her landscape, and he saw a highly colored and 
careless young woman who fitted so snugly into 

93 



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the rough western picture that he doubted the 
possibility of ever seeing her against a different 
background. 

For a little space they were painstakingly gentle 
with each other; then, mysteriously, irritations 
sprang at them out of thin air. If it made Ginger 
impatient to find him clumsy and inept at the 
things of her world, it jarred increasingly upon 
him to have her say, “It sure does look like we’re 
going to have a scorcher,” to find her utterly blank 
about books and plays and music. In her milder 
moods it seemed as if he might beguile her into 
reading, but the question of where to begin ap¬ 
palled him. It was not what she should read, but 
what she should have read. It was all summed 
up in that one sentence—the empty lack which he 
found in her. In her swiftly melting moods of 
tenderness, when she gave up a ride to stay with 
him in the cool old adobe, closed against the hot 
air from eight o’clock in the morning, after the 
California tradition, she was singularly unsatis¬ 
factory as a companion, what time she was not in 
his arms. He discovered exactly why this was the 
case. She might pull off her jingling spurs and fling 
aside her Stetson and come into the big living 

94 



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room and sit down, and stay docilely for an hour 
or more—but her mind never came indoors. That 
was it. She might sit as softly as her Valdes 
great-grandmother in Sevilla, but her whole pre¬ 
occupation was with the vigorous world outside. 

He began to see, reluctantly, and with a chili 
sense of disaster, the impermanence of their re¬ 
lation. While he was kissing Ginger there were 
no questions and no problems, but life, he was 
cannily sure, could not consist wholly of kissing 
Ginger. The house of their love had been built 
upon the sands; shining, golden sands, but sands 
for all that, and he told himself grimly—able, 
now and then, to stand away from his situation 
and see it with a saving grain of humor—that 
the lasting structure of his affection must be 
built not only upon the rock, but upon Plymouth 
Rock. He found himself stressing his purity 
of speech, professing even more ignorance than 
was really his with regard to horses and cattle 
and crops; and Ginger, for her part, let the 
dresses she had bought in San Francisco hang 
idle in her closet and strode in to supper in her 
worn corduroy trousers and her brown shirt. 

It needed, presently, only a small weight to tip 

95 



CORDUROY 


the scales, and ’Rome Ojeda supplied it. It was 
a day of dry and dazzling heat, and they had 
planned a cool and quiet afternoon in the merci¬ 
ful sanctuary of the house. Ginger had brought 
out the old Spanish chests which had come to 
Dos Pozos with Rosalia Valdes and they were 
to revel in old Spanish laces and embroideries and 
jewelry, and puzzle over yellowed Spanish letters, 
and Dean was happier and more hopeful than he 
had been for days. Ginger had changed her 
riding things for a thin thing in yellow, and she 
was adorably gentle. 

Then ’Rome Ojeda rode noisily up to the 
veranda and called them to come for a ride. 
He was on Pedro, leading Snort, and he said he 
would slip down to the corral and saddle Diablo 
while Ginger was changing her clothes. 

It was astonishing to see how quickly the cool 
old room, dimly shaded, had changed into a field 
of hot battle. They were never able to remember 
subsequently, either of them, just what went be¬ 
fore the final challenge; there must have been 
speeches ripe with bitterness on both sides before 
Dean heard himself saying slowly—like a person 

9 6 



CORL/uROY 


in a play—“Very well, then; if you go, this is 
the end.’’ 

Ginger went, flinging herself into her riding 
suit and marching through the house with her 
Scotch chin held high and her Spanish mouth 
hard, slamming the door for good measure and 
springing into Snort’s saddle and loping furiously 
away, but she didn’t really believe it was the end. 
She had a very good time with ’Rome Ojeda and 
a wild and satisfying ride, and when she came 
back, four hours later, she was good-natured 
again. She wasn’t entirely ready to forgive Dean, 
but she was ready to consider forgiving him, and 
she went into the house to find him and tell him so. 

She did not find him. She found, instead, an 
irate and voluble Aunt Fan who had been gen¬ 
erating rage for hours. 

“You needn’t call him,’’ she said. “He won’t 
hear you, not unless you can shout loud enough 
to make yourself heard at San Luis Obispo. I 
dare say you could, if you put your mind to it 
:—it’s simply horrible, the way you yell to the 
men in the corral. Tomboys are all right and 
very fetching, but let me tell you, Ginger Mc- 
Veagh, you’ve grown up, and tom -women aren’t 

97 



CORDUROY 


cunning at all, and if you can’t key down and act 
more like a lady and less like a-” 

“San Luis?” Ginger stood still and looked at 
her. She did not seem to have heard anything 
else beside the name of the town. “San Luis? 
What’s he doing there?” 

“He’s catching the Coaster to Los Angeles to¬ 
night; that’s what he’s doing there, Ginger Mc- 
Veagh. And to-morrow morning he’ll be on his 
way to Boston, and why he hasn’t gone before, 
heaven only knows—I don’t. Now if you’ve got 
anything in your head but ’Rome Ojeda and long¬ 
horned steers and alfalfa crops you’ll stop staring 
at me and get-” 

“Did he say anything?” she wanted to know in 
a mild and wondering voice. “What did he say, 
Aunt Fan?” 

“He said, ‘Tell her I’ve gone; she will under¬ 
stand,’ and he was white as a sheet. If ever 
anybody in this world looked like death on a 
pale horse, that boy did when he walked out of 
this house. He telephoned into town for a 
machine and he was packed before it got here, 
and he shook hands with me and with Manuela 

98 





CORDUROY 


and Ling and out he marched, and if you want 

my opinion, Ginger McVeagh-” 

Ginger did not in the least want her opinion; 
she wanted Dean Wolcott, sharply and impera¬ 
tively. She walked out of the corridor and into 
the living room where they had begun the after¬ 
noon together. The old chests were there still, 
and the table was spread with a litter of ancient 
treasures. She picked up a fichu of yellowed lace 
and put it down again, and a fan with sticks of 
carved ivory and looked at it gravely, as if she 
had never seen it before. It had surprised her 
and worried her a little to find him so warmly 
interested in things of that sort; she would have 
preferred having him clumsily ignorant about 
them, good-humoredly tolerant. Now, she real¬ 
ized, it would never need to worry her again. She 
stood staring down at the beautiful old things; 
they looked mellow and very wise. Three gen¬ 
erations of Valdes women had used them before 
her, but she knew, suddenly, that she hated them 
and never wanted to see them again. She began 
to stuff them hastily back into the carved chests 
of dark and satiny wood, and called to Manuela 
to put them away in the storeroom. 

99 

* j 
> > > 

> > 


) ) 5 




CORDUROY 


Her aunt followed her before she had finished. 
“If you hurry,” she said urgently, “if you get out 
the car this minute and fly, you can catch him at 
San Luis!” 

Ginger did not answer her for an instant. 
Then she said, deliberately and without passion, 
“I don’t want to catch him at San Luis, Aunt Fan. 
I don’t want to catch him—anywhere.” 

Mrs. Featherstone went home to San Fran¬ 
cisco the next day, thoroughly out of temper with 
her niece and heartily willing to wash her hands 
of her. She told her, at parting, that she had 
missed the one golden and handsome opportunity 
of her life which was far beyond her deserts, and 
that she would never have another such and it 
served her right; she sincerely hoped she would 
marry ’Rome Ojeda and have seven wild children, 
all born with spurs on. It sounded like the laying 
on of a robust old-fashioned curse. 

Ginger let Estrada drive her aunt in to town 
to take her train. She was very tired of being 
berated; she didn’t want to talk about Dean Wol¬ 
cott any more and she didn’t want to think about 
him any more. She went steadily about the busi- 

IOO 




CORDUROY 


ness of Dos Pozos in the days that followed; old 
Manuela wiped her eyes furtively and burned 
three candles to the saint of the impossible, and 
Estrada was gravely regretful. 

“I miss very much that young senor” he said 
to his silent mistress. “That is a very fine gentle¬ 
man, Sehorita” 

There were many inquiries for him at first 
among her rancher neighbors, but after she had 
said—“He has gone. No, he is not coming back,” 
to a few of them, the word went over the whole 
vicinity; they stopped asking for him, and they 
were immensely cordial and approving in their 
manner to Ginger. 

’Rome Ojeda showed less restraint; he was 
openly triumphant about it. “Snappy work,” he 
said to Ginger, with his flashing grin. “I guess 
maybe we didn’t show him up, between us, me’n 
Snort! Say, I’m a-goin’ to get that hawse a 
medal! He sure did spill the Boston beans!” 

Ginger listened to him at first without comment, 
but she said, presently, “’Rome, he was Aleck’s 
friend; I’m never going to forget that.” 

“Lord,” said ’Rome Ojeda, comfortably, “I 
guess a feller’d bunk in with ’most anybody, over 


IOI 



CORDUROY 


there.” But he stopped talking about Dean Wol¬ 
cott and he did not immediately urge his own 
claims. There was something about Ginger, 
about her looks and her voice, that he didn’t quite 
understand. He told himself that he’d better 
just let things loaf along, “as was,” for the 
present. 

Dr. Gurney Mayfield made a detour to take in 
Dos Pozos on his motor trip next month. He 
was greatly surprised and disappointed not to find 
his young friend, Dean Wolcott. 

“Well, well,” he said, regretfully, “so Dean 
had to go home, did he? Well, I expect he had 
to get back to business. How was he feeling?” 

“He seemed to be feeling all right,” said Ginger 
briefly. 

“That’s good,” said the doctor, heartily, “that’s 
good! You know, Ginger, that boy isn’t out of 
the woods yet, not by a long sight. Shell shock 
. . . meanest thing in the world to get over, clear 
over! They’ll think they are fit as a fiddle, and 
then let something out of the ordinary happen— 
some slight shock, or strain or overexertion— 
By the way, Dean didn’t do any rough stuff here, 


102 



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did he ? I thought afterward that I should have 
warned him, but it never occurred to me that he’d 
try it. Did he?” 

“What do you mean by rough stuff?” said 
Ginger. Her voice was very low, and she did not 
look at him. 

“Oh—hard riding—all-day-in-the-saddle trips 
— anything that would tire him beyond his 
strength, you know. It’ll be many a long day be¬ 
fore he’s absolutely himself again—body or brain. 
Was he pretty careful and sensible? I know how 
hard it is to make these young chaps take care of 
themselves, but I expect you could manage him, 
Ginger!” He twinkled upon her, kindly. It was 
one of the dozen excellent reasons for his beloved¬ 
ness that Dr. Gurney Mayfield always fitted 
people out with the best possible motives and in¬ 
tentions. He presupposed them to have justice 
and fairness and gentleness and good will, just 
as certainly as they had tonsils and livers and 
lungs and spines, and he confidently expected to 
see the manifestations of them. 

“I don’t believe I—managed him—very care¬ 
fully,” said Ginger. She did not meet his eyes. 
“I expect he did—overdo, sometimes.” 

103 



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Manuela came in, then, to say that dinner was 
waiting, and Ginger jumped up thankfully and 
hurried the doctor in to the table, and she began 
to talk briskly about her Aunt Fan and to ask 
interested questions about his summer camp in 
Monterey County, and it was not until he was well 
on his way again that Dr. Mayfield realized how 
skillfully she had kept the talk away from the 
subject of Dean Wolcott. 



CHAPTER VII 


I N the last week of September Ginger went 
with a flag of truce to her Aunt Fan and 
asked her to go east with her. 

“Boston?” asked Aunt Fan, shrewdly. 

“No,” said Ginger, coloring hotly but steady¬ 
eyed, “New York.” She considered for a moment 
and then said, gravely. “But it is—connected 
with Boston, in a way, Aunt Fan.” 

She put it, rather stumblingly, into words. Dr. 
Mayfield had made her realize how unjust she had 
been to Dean Wolcott with regard to his riding, 
and that had made her understand the possibility 
of being unjust in other ways. She was very 
brief and very dry about it; Mrs. Featherstone 
was not the sort of person to whom one opened 
the shy depths of one’s heart—she pounced too 
much, and chattered. It was enough for her to 
know that her niece w r as open-mindedly going to 
give eastern culture a chance at polishing the sur¬ 
face of her rugged w'esternism. 

105 



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Aunt Fan was delighted. “Of course I’ll go, 
child! We’ll have a wonderful time—you’ll see! 
You’ll be crazy about it! Just wait till you see 
Fifth Avenue—and Peacock Alley! You know, 
Jim’ll just be pleased to the bone to beau us 
around—you can’t see anything of New York 
at night without a man, of course—and if we 
see it with him, we’ll see it right!” She beamed 
affectionately upon the girl for the first time 
since Dean Wolcott’s exodus from Dos Pozos. 
“Honey, I’m tickled pink to go with you. We’ll 
see all the new shows, and you know what I’m 
thinking of?— You know, I may have my face 
lifted!” 

Ginger thought grimly that she, personally, 
might have her heart lifted, but she didn’t say 
so. She went down town and saw about reserva¬ 
tions and bought a wardrobe trunk and put her 
two evening gowns in it (Aunt Fan had banned 
all the rest) and in a fortnight they were on their 
way across the continent. 

It surprised Ginger a great deal and at first 
annoyed her considerably to find how much 
country there seemed to be outside of California. 
She had known, of course, that New York would 

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be larger and more impressive than San Fran¬ 
cisco or Los Angeles, but she had felt that most 
of the desirable out-of-doors was contained in 
her own state. The great city itself startled and 
saddened her; she had not realized that there 
were as many people as that in the world, and 
most of them tired-looking and pale and in a 
hectic hurry to get somewhere else. They stopped 
at an opulent and ornate hotel and Aunt Fan 
was very gay and amiable, and on their first day 
—they had arrived in the morning—they shopped 
on the Avenue, lunched at the Ritz, did a matinee 
and had tea, and then Jim Featherstone called for 
them and took them down to dinner at the Bre- 
voort and to a play, and afterwards to one of the 
roofs, where they ate again and danced. 

Jim Featherstone was a tall, thin, middle-aged 
man with a rather melancholy expression and 
much skill in assembling a meal. He and Aunt 
Fan were unfeignedly glad to see each other, and 
Ginger was content to have them talk together 
and leave her to herself. They left her to herself 
a great deal in the days and evenings which 
followed—not that they ever forgot her or ne¬ 
glected her, but she had a sense of being with 

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• 

them but not of them, and she felt that it always 
would be so. Her aunt, languid as a wilted lily 
at Dos Pozos, developed an amazing energy in 
New York; from their nine o’clock tray break¬ 
fast in their sitting-room until one the next morn¬ 
ing, she was in perpetual and enthusiastic motion 
— always panting a little, taking her short, 
chugging steps in her short-vamped, high-heeled 
pumps, her blue eyes prominent, like a gold fish’s. 

“This is the life, dearie,'’ she said, breathlessly, 
one day. “And you know, I haven’t gained an 
ounce, for all I’ve eaten like a human being; 
it’s being so active that saves me. Jim doesn’t 
want me to have my face lifted; not for two or 
three years anyway, he says. He says you get 
a sort of hard look; he says he wouldn’t like 
to have my expression changed.” She sighed. 
“Isn’t it a crime— A man that can be a friend 
like that, a total loss as a husband?” She pat¬ 
ted Ginger’s arm (she was very fond of her, in 
these days) affectionately. “Dearie, I don’t know 
that I regret —you know! He was a sweet boy, 
and class, class if ever I saw it in my life, but I’m 
not so sure he would have made you happy. If 

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Jim Featherstone couldn’t make a woman happy, 
I don’t know who-" 

“I think,” said Ginger, almost to herself, “a 
woman has to make herself happy, Aunt Fan. I 
guess no one can do it for you.” Ginger was 
saying “I think” a good deal at that time, and 
she was actually thinking. She was growing very 
tired of long parades of food, and the pavements 
made her feet ache for the sun-baked earth, for 
her stirrups. She had seen so many plays— 
“shows,” Jim Featherstone and her Aunt Fan in¬ 
variably called them—“a good show,” “a bad 
show,” ‘‘a peach of a little show,” that they were 
blurred and jumbled in her memory, and her eyes 
wanted distance and sky line instead of bright 
lights indoors and quivering electric signs on the 
streets. 

She had been more than a month, now, in the 
east, and she had docilely done everything and 
bought everything she was asked to do and to 
buy, and she had gone everywhere they wanted to 
take her, but she was puzzled. Was this the 
sort of thing which had made Dean Wolcott dif¬ 
ferent from ’Rome Ojeda? 

Her aunt sensed her restlessness and grew un- 

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easy; she had no wish to terminate her own 
holiday. “Jim,” she said urgently, “I wish to 
goodness you could rustle up a man for Ginger— 
not just anybody, of course, but some really nice 
chap. One that looks like a collar ad —you know! 
The child’s getting homesick and blue, and if we 
don’t give her something to think about she’ll rush 
home and marry that wild-man—that immorally 
good-looking Ojeda boy.” 

Jim Featherstone was interested, but he really 
didn’t know what to do about it. All the men he 
knew were his own sort and age; hard-boiled old 
birds, he called them; wouldn't do for Ginger. 
He had a very soft spot in his leathery heart for 
Ginger, Jim Featherstone. They decided that 
they must try to give her a better time, and they 
set earnestly about it, but the girl did not respond. 

“Dearie,” her aunt would say in the morning, 
“don’t you want to come along with me while I 
get my henna rinse? You could have a manicure 
while you’re waiting, or a facial. Or just sit and 
look out at the Avenue— that's as good as a show, 
I always say.” 

But Ginger had had a manicure two days earlier 
(she had come to like the look of her brown 


i io 



CORDUROY 


fingers after careful grooming) and she never 
had facials, and looking out at the Avenue made 
her long unendurably for the range; and it seemed 
to her that Aunt Fan had had her mind as well 
as her hair henna rinsed; as if she’d had a per¬ 
manent wave in her personality. Then, suddenly, 
she remembered Mary Wiley. 

Mary Wiley was a girl she had known at board¬ 
ing school in Los Angeles, a slim, frail girl who 
had been sent west for the mildness of the winters. 
She was three or four years older than Ginger, 
but they had roomed together for several months 
and the younger child had liked her warmly, with¬ 
out ever understanding why. She had very 
smooth, cool hands and she was always delicately 
and pleasantly pale, and never in a hurry. She 
always had her lessons learned and her themes 
written and had generous margins of time for 
other people. 

They had corresponded for a while; it was 
Ginger who had stopped writing. Mary Wiley 
had sent her a brief, bracing little note when she 
had heard, through other channels of the old 
school, of Aleck’s death, but Ginger had never 
acknowledged it. Now she wanted to find her. 


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The telephone book was rich in Wileys but she 
knew she would recognize the address when she 
saw it and she did—up in the Eighties, and just 
off Riverside Drive, the hotel door man told her. 
She could take the bus. Ginger liked taking the 
bus when she could ride on the top; it gave her a 
comforting little sense of leashed freedom for a 
while, and she loved the river. It was the first 
river she had ever known, personally, and she 
had the merest bowing acquaintance with it now, 
but she knew that she would like knowing it if 
she could. 

It was a narrow, quiet-looking house; it made 
her think of Mary Wiley herself. A neat, middle- 
aged maid answered her ring and took her name 
and said that she would see if Miss Wiley was at 
home. She had hardly finished her leisurely 
mounting of the stairs when Ginger heard a low 
exclamation of pleasure and her friend came 
skimming down to her. (She recalled, now, the 
way Mary Wiley had of moving, of coming down¬ 
stairs. ) 

She did not kiss her but she took both her 
hands and glowed her deep and quiet gladness. 
“Virginia McVeagh! My dear! It’s so nice to 


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see you! And how lovely you are—much lovelier, 
even, than when you were little!” 

Mary Wiley was a plain young woman herself 
but she drank up Ginger’s beauty thirstily. She 
was still slim and frail, with rather colorless hair 
and skin, but she had good gray eyes and a singu¬ 
larly intelligent sweetness of expression. 

They sat down to talk in the small drawing¬ 
room which was rather scantily furnished, Ginger 
thought, and presently she telephoned to her 
aunt that she was staying for luncheon and would 
not be back until late in the afternoon. It just 
happened, Mary Wiley said, to be her lazy day, 
so they could have a fine visit. 

Her mother and father were at luncheon, 
elderly, mellow people with low voices and much 
gentle warmth of manner and they were extraor¬ 
dinarily kind to their daughter’s school friend 
without in the least making what Aunt Fan would 
have called “a fuss over her.” Luncheon was a 
very simple meal—clear soup in dull blue bowls 
with thin slices of lemon floating on it, something 
creamed on toast, tiny graham muffins and a fruit 
salad, and there were the plainest possible doilies 
of unbleached linen on the dark, lusterless table. 

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The middle-aged maid served silently and slowly, 
and—in contrast with the hotel and the res¬ 
taurants where Jim Featherstone had taken her 
—it was like leaving the pounding surf and com¬ 
ing into a little still bay. 

The Wiley family, it appeared, had not seen 
a fourth of the plays which Ginger had seen; they 
were astonished at her energy. They had seen 
three of the betterfpnes and there were one or 
two more which they meant to see during the 
winter; they did not—the parents—go out very 
much at night. On the other hand, they seemed 
to have heard a great deal of music; they had 
season tickets for the Symphony and the Philhar¬ 
monic, and they were going that afternoon to hear 
a young Russian pianist whom their daughter had 
heard the evening before, and they spoke of art 
exhibits in the smaller galleries. When they first 
asked Ginger if she had seen any interesting pic¬ 
tures she thought they meant on the screen and 
she answered accordingly that she had been too 
busy seeing plays; she was relieved, an instant 
later, to see that they had not realized her mis¬ 
take. Mary Wiley said she would take her to 

"4 



CORDUROY 


the Ehrich Galleries next day; there were some 
delectable old Dutch things there now. 

Mrs. Wiley wanted to know if Ginger had seen 
any other parts of the east, and her husband and 
her daughter began to smile at her. 

“What she really wants to know, Virginia,” 
said Mary Wiley, “is whether you’ve seen Bos¬ 
ton?” 

Ginger could feel herself coloring. “No,” she 
said, “I haven’t seen anything but New York 
—yet.” 

“My wife is a Bostonian, you see, Miss Vir¬ 
ginia,” said Mr. Wiley, “and she still has, after 
thirty years, a little the feeling of the Children of 
Israel in Egypt.” He chuckled enjoyingly and his 
wife defended herself gently. 

“My dear Walter, you know I have become— 
I am—a loyal New Yorker!” She gave a very 
small sigh. “New York is a wonderful city; it is 
stupid to compare the two. Boston-” 

“ ‘By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, 
yea, we wept, when we remembered Zion / )} her 
husband quoted, teasingly. “Though it is to be 
admitted, Deborah, my dear, you have wept un¬ 
obtrusively.’* 


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“ ‘For there they that carried us away captive 
required of us a song / ” she flashed back at him. 

Her daughter leaned over and patted her hand. 
“She’s sung the Lord’s song in a strange land, 
hasn’t she, father?” 

“She has—loyally and lustily,” he laughed. 

“Well,” said Mrs. Wiley, smiling pacifically 
upon them both, “I like to think I’ve brought a 
little of Boston with me and transplanted it. My 
people”—she turned to Ginger—“have never yet, 
after all these years, become entirely reconciled 
to having me a New Yorker, but I say to them 
—‘My dears, cannot one have a lamp, and a fire, 
and a book, even in New York?’ ” 

Ginger liked their voices and the way they 
looked at each other. She wondered if Dean 
Wolcott’s mother was something like Mrs. Wiley. 
Presently the parents went away to their concert 
and the girls talked for an hour, and then Mary 
Wiley, who said she had been indoors all day, 
offered to walk with Ginger back to her hotel. 
They went beside the river as far as Seventy- 
second Street, and Mary Wiley walked with her 
remembered smoothness of gait, swiftly and easily 
on her low heeled and gray-spatted feet. Ginger, 

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in footgear of her Aunt Fan’s choosing, seemed 
to be on stilts in comparison. She learned, during 
the walk, what her friend had meant by calling 
that her lazy day. Every other week day she had 
classes at an Italian Settlement House far up¬ 
town; she thought Ginger might enjoy visiting it 
with her, one day. 

This was the beginning—when Mary Wiley 
walked back into Ginger’s life on her low heels— 
of Ginger’s entrance into the inner city, where her 
Aunt Fan, ardent pilgrim that she was, and Jim 
Featherstone, born on West Fortieth Street, could 
never penetrate. She still went once or twice a 
week with them to dinners and “shows,” but for 
the rest of the time she was quietly busy with her 
friend: afternoons at the Settlement, early morn¬ 
ing walks in the Park, trips on the river—over the 
river to the Palisades; the Russian quarter, the 
Syrian quarter; a service at the Greek cathedral, 
performances at little theaters which Jim Feather- 
stone had shied away from as dangerously high¬ 
brow; exhibitions of strange new pictures at the 
smaller galleries—or mellow old pictures. Mary 
Wiley seemed always occupied but never hurried; 
her life was a brimming cup which never ran over. 

ii7 



CORDUROY 


She took Ginger to an upstairs shop in a cross 
street where low-voiced saleswomen conferred 
together over her and sent for certain special 
models—“Miss Hadley, don’t you think that old- 
blue frock for Miss McVeagh—the one with the 
silver fringe ?”—or “I believe that Russian peasant 
thing would suit Miss McVeagh-” 

Mary Wiley urged her to take the Russian 
peasant thing; it was richly red, of a soft wool 
stuff, boldly embellished in cobalt and dull silver. 
“It’s the sort of thing I’ve longed all my life 
to wear,” she said, and her satisfaction seemed all 
the deeper for being vicarious. “You can’t think 
what a joy it is to see it on you, Virginia! My 
dear, are you half thankful enough for being so 
beautiful? You ought to set aside a Thanksgiving 
Day for every month in the year!” 

Ginger liked her cool compliments. She liked 
everything she did with Mary Wiley. Perhaps, 
best of all, she liked the luncheons at the Woman’s 
City Club and the Query Club and others to 
which her friend belonged or went as a guest, 
where she—Ginger—might sit in mouselike silence 
and hear brisk and vigorous talk. Mary Wiley 
sometimes spoke, quietly and effectively. Once, 

i j 8 




CORDUROY 


in the midst of a discussion on the iniquities of the 
retailer, she said suddenly—“I think Miss Mc- 
Veagh could tell us something of interest on that 
subject; you know, she owns and operates one of 
the largest cattle ranches in her part of Cali¬ 
fornia.” 

“That baby?” A lean, elderly woman bent 
forward in her seat and smiled at Ginger, and— 
her cheeks crisping hotly—she heard herself 
speaking. It was incredible that they should all 
stop, those keen and purposeful women—and 
listen to Ginger McVeagh, but they did. 

“Did you get that, Helen?” she heard them 
saying to each other when she had finished her 
three or four sentences. “That’s all she gets a 
pound—and consider what we pay our local 
butchers!” 

Several came and spoke to her afterward; Cali¬ 
fornia was always a name to conjure with, they 
said, but a California cattle ranch— They made 
her feel definite and worth while; once Mary 
Wiley asked half a dozen of them in to meet her 
at tea, and made her wear the red peasant dress. 

But most of all she found herself at the Sym¬ 
phony. When she was homesick, which was often, 

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in spite of her new contentment, she found that 
music—not solo things nor chamber music, but 
the crash and volume of an orchestra—most 
nearly approximated the breadth and freedom of 
her life at home. Sitting beside her friend or 
quite alone, serenely ignorant of composition and 
composer and interdependence of instrument, she 
was as wholly content as when she was riding 
Felipe or Diablo into the heart of a sunset. When 
she tried, gropingly, to tell Mary Wiley what she 
felt, she quoted to her a line of Huneker’s; it 
ought, she thought, to be graven over the door of 
every concert hall: “Other arts give us defined 
pleasures, but music is the only art that restores us 
to ourselves.” 

It restored Ginger not only to herself but to 
her lover. Whether they ever came together 
again, whether she ever saw him again, sitting 
perched in her high balcony seat in Carnegie Hall, 
all the pride and criticism and bitterness were 
cleansed away; she went to him once more as she 
had gone to him on Aleck’s bridge; she found 
harmony in harmony. 

“You are radiant,” said Mary Wiley to her as 
they came away from Carnegie on an afternoon 


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of dazzling snow. “I knew you would love Tschai- 
kowsky. You look—my dear, did you love it so 
much?” 

Ginger fell into step beside her. “Let’s walk, 
shall we? Yes; I loved it. But I was thinking 
just then about—Mary, I would like to go to 
Boston.” 

“Would you, really ? How warmly mother will 
approve of you for that chaste desire 1” 

“Mary, there is some one in Boston I must see. 
I was unjust, and ignorant, and— mean. Mean 
and stupid. Now I’m going to Boston and tell 
him so.” 

Mary Wiley smiled at her. “I think that’s big 
and fine, Virginia. Shall I go with you—to Bos¬ 
ton, I mean? I’ve been wanting to run down 
for a day or two, to see my cousin Sarah; she 
is ill again. There’s a mousy little hotel just across 
the street from her house where you could stay. 
Let me see . . . my young aliens would adore 
not being Americanized for a few days; suppose 
we go Monday and come back on Friday? That 
will give you time for a little sedate sight-seeing 
to please mother—and for—for your own affairs.” 


12 I 



CORDUROY 


She smiled sunnily at her. “My dear, I’m very 
glad. I’ve been sure that there was some one.” 

Ginger shook her head, her color mounting. “I 
don’t know, Mary; I’m not sure of anything, 
except that I must go—and tell him.” 

“I’ve known there was some one,” said Mary 
Wiley. There had been some one, with her, once, 
but he had not come home from France. Mrs. 
Wiley had wept when she told Ginger about it, 
but if Mary Wiley ever wept she made her tears 
turn the wheels of her serene and selfless activities. 

Aunt Fan lifted her plucked eyebrows when she 
learned that her niece was going to Boston. “/ 
should say it would be much better form just to 
drop him a line—one of those postcards with a 
picture of the hotel on it—and say—oh, ‘West is 
East,’ or something kind of cute like that, and 
wait for him to make the first move!” Aunt Fan 
was feeling a trifle acid; she and Jim Featherstone 
were getting on each other’s nerves again, and in 
spite of being so triumphantly active she had 
gained six pounds. 

On the way to Boston Ginger tried to formulate 
what she would say to Dean Wolcott; she wanted 


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to make it proudly clear to him that this was no 
overture for a return to their former relation; it 
was simply and solely an acknowledgment of her 
wrongness of attitude at Dos Pozos, of her new 
respect and liking for the world he had always 
lived in, but always when she rehearsed it her 
phrases were swallowed up in great waves of 
gladness which rolled over her—like the music she 
had heard from her high perch in Carnegie. After 
all, she was Virginia Valdes McVeagh, feudal 
lady of her own land; under her novel humility 
there was the conviction that she had only to 
extend her forgiveness and her understanding. 
She summoned up the memory of his look, his tall 
slimness, his walk, the tones of his voice; his arms, 
his lips. 

Directly Mary Wiley left her at the hushed 
little hotel she wrote a note to him—four lines— 
and sent it by messenger, and sat down to wait in 
the lobby. A grave bell boy tried twice to show 
her to her room, but she told him she wished to 
wait there for the answer to the letter she had 
just sent. She was joyfully sure what form the 
answer would take; Dean Wolcott would come 
himself. She could picture him, crossing to her 

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from the front door to the chair where she sat; 
he would look as he had looked that golden day, 
when they came together on Aleck’s bridge. 

The door opened and closed nineteen times by 
count. She would know her messenger the instant 
she saw him; he was a rather small boy, copiously 
freckled, and he wore thick spectacles. 

He returned in exactly twenty-seven minutes by 
the office clock and handed Ginger’s note back to 
her, unopened. There was only a caretaker at 
the Wolcott residence, he reported: she had told 
him that the entire Wolcott family had gone to 
Florida. 



CHAPTER VIII 



r ONTEREY; Monterey . . . . Dean 


Wolcott liked the look and the sound 
of the word. Directly the train de¬ 


posited him there he liked the place itself. His 
one impression of California was of dust and 
glare, of dry and dazzling heat: this was a land 
of gray and gentle summer—June-veiled. Some 
one sent him down to the old wharf for his 
luncheon and he ate zestfully of “Pop Ernst’s” 
piping hot chowder and meltingly tender abalone 
and then set out for his afternoon of exploring. 
He liked the old customhouse; he liked the “Sher¬ 
man Rose,” and the fishing boats in the bay; he 
liked the flavor of tradition in everything; he 
hadn’t supposed there was as much background as 
this in all of California. He drove out to the 
Mission at Carmel and had his tea at a little house 
close by, and went back to Monterey and did the 
seventeen-mile drive, and he kept stopping the car 
and getting out to go close to the gnarled, em- 


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battled trees on the cliffs. He thought they looked 
as if Arthur Rackham had drawn them; they 
satisfied him deeply. He stayed the night at Del 
Monte and liked the old hotel and the precise and 
formal gardens; he was amazed to find how 
heartily he was liking everything he saw, for he 
had not undertaken his western pilgrimage in the 
spirit of a joy ride. He had undertaken it grimly, 
purposefully, resentfully, but it began to look as 
if he should actually enjoy it. He felt his spirits 
mounting as he climbed into the front seat of the 
Big Sur stage next morning and found himself the 
only passenger. The driver told him that he 
didn’t carry much beside the mail until around the 
Fourth of July; then people began to swarm down 
to Pfeiffer’s Resort, and the deer hunters came 
in with the open season, the first of August. 

“Won’t be many folks where you’ll be, though,” 
he said, grinning. “If you’re the lonesome kind, 
you’re out of luck.” 

Dean Wolcott said he did not believe he was 
the lonesome kind. He was enjoying the five- 
hour drive enormously. The scenery was oddly 
satisfying to him—now along a rocky and precipi¬ 
tous coast, now on a bleakly barren hillside, and 

126 



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the sea shone with the colors of an abalone shell; 
it made him think a little of Italy. And—just 
as he had adjusted his mind to rigor and stern 
plainness—the road turned inland to lush and 
lavish beauty—redwood trees mounting nobly, 
deep carpeting of ferns, streams, wild flowers, 
enchanting sudden vistas of the distant sea. They 
toiled gaspingly up the Serra grade and rushed 
down the other side with hurtling speed; they 
stopped at every ranch gate with mail and papers 
and parcel post and held leisurely converse with 
unhurried men and women; they left the Little 
Sur country behind and forged on through chang¬ 
ing loveliness, now in the muted sunshine, now in 
green shadow. 

The stage driver looked at his watch. “Going 
to make it by five, like I told you we would,” he 
said with satisfaction. “Look—there’s Pfeif¬ 
fer’s!” They made a last sharp turn and swung 
into the yard. “And there’s the doc’, come to 
meet you!” 

Dr. Gurney Mayfield was clambering out of an 
ancient surrey and he secured a weary-looking, 
putty-colored horse to the fence before he hur¬ 
ried over to meet the newcomer. “Well, well y 

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my dear boy, but it’s good to see you— here!” 
he twinkled at him. “Pardon my not coming 
right over but I had to tie Sam; he may look 
as if he had the sleeping sickness but he’d be 
off for camp the minute my back was turned. 
Now, let’s have a look at you, Dean!” His keen 
eyes went competently over him. “Feel as fit 
as you look?” 

“Absolutely.” 

“Ready for the rough stuff?” 

“Quite.” 

“Good!— You’re going to have plenty of 
it. Well, did you enjoy the work, the training?” 

“Enormously, Doctor! It’s made me as hard 
as nails; exactly what I needed.” He was crisp 
and brisk and confident; his color was whole¬ 
some, emphasized just now by a flush of sun¬ 
burn after his long day’s ride, and his eyes were 
steady. “You have been no end kind, Doctor; I 
was amazed at your being able to fix it up for 
me here.” 

They had walked back to the surrey. “Get 
in,” said Dr. Mayfield. “Now, I call it a rare 
treat, in an age of mad motors to ride behind 
old Sam in this surrey.” He backed the venerable 

128 



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steed away from the fence and started him down 
the road. “My camp is a mile and a half fur¬ 
ther; no machines allowed—riders and hikers 
only. As to being able to arrange things for you 
here, it wasn’t difficult; the regular Ranger is 
a very good friend of mine, and he has had a 
real vacation coming to him for a long time. 
He’ll stay with you for a while, of course, and 
put you on to the ropes. Steady, Sam, old boy!” 
He applied a shrieking brake as they jolted down 
a bank and into a shallow, hurrying stream. “The 
Sur goes through the camp in three places,” he 
said. “This is great country, my boy. Wildest 
county in California, and I hope it always will 
be.” They splashed noisily across the little river 
and climbed steeply out again. 

“Well, I fancy you haven’t any difficulty in 
keeping machines out,” commented Dean, looking 
back. 

“They don’t often try it twice—not the same 
machine,” his friend exulted. They were jog¬ 
ging along on a curving road, now, through the 
narrow valley. “The ocean’s over there, three 
miles,” he gestured to the right. “Near enough 
to get the tang of it, but far enough to miss 

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the fog; the mountains on this side are the 
Santa Lucia range—Ventanas off to the left. Just 
wait till I get you on a horse and give you the 
first real glimpse of it! Oh, by the way—I got 
Snort for you!” 

“Really! Great work, Doctor. I am pleased! 
—But I don’t know how I can ever thank you 
for taking so much trouble.” 

But Dr. Mayfield had been taking trouble 
for people all his life and now that he was re¬ 
tired from practice he considered that he had 
nothing else to do. “ ’Rome Ojeda didn’t want 
to let him go, not a little bit, but I said I simply 
had to have him for a friend of mine, a Ranger 
up here, and Ginger brought him round. I guess 
Ginger can make him do just about anything she 
wants,” he chuckled, “hard-boiled cow-puncher 
that he is.” He was rather elaborately casual 
about it, and he thought he saw the young man’s 
sunburn reinforced by a deeper color. 

“Is she—I hope Ginger is well?” said Dean 
Wolcott civilly. 

“Oh, good Lord, yes,” said the doctor, com¬ 
fortably. “Never knew the child to be anything 
else. I remember offering her a dollar a day for 

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every day she’d stay in bed while she had the 
measles but she took it standing! I was in great 
luck to keep her off her pony. Come on, Sam— 
can’t you spruce up a little? We’ve got com¬ 
pany on board! Yes, Ginger’s well; I should 
say she is—blooming! Busier than a whole hive 
of bees, of course, running the ranch. Remark¬ 
able girl, Virginia McVeagh; combines her 
father and her mother to an astonishing degree. 
They were an odd pair to come together, differ¬ 
ent as chalk and cheese—but they made a suc¬ 
cess of it.” There was the faintest possible em¬ 
phasis on the pronoun. “Heard a good deal of 
talk, the time I went down there after Snort, 
about her being engaged to ’Rome Ojeda.” 

“Yes?” said Dean, courteously attentive. 

“Yes. In fact, ’Rome himself rather gave me 
to understand—-but I don’t know. I won’t be¬ 
lieve it till I hear it from Ginger. I hope she 
won’t be in too much of a hurry. Still, he’s a 
fine, upstanding boy, ’Rome Ojeda, and he’s 
known her all her life and he understands her. 
Well, Snort’s waiting for you in the corral! A 
good horse, but he hasn’t been handled right— 
not what I call right. ’Rome’s pretty hard—and 

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pretty harsh, I consider, with his stock. I’m 
afraid you won’t find him a very comfortable 
mount.” 

“I don’t expect to,” said Dean Wolcott, grimly, 
a look of reminiscence in his eyes. “But I expect 
to ride him. I—doubtless it seems rather ab¬ 
surd to you, Doctor, my desire for that particular 
horse, but I think I’ve come to consider him as 
a sort of symbol; he showed me—and incidentally 
the rest of the world’’—he was able to grin, rue¬ 
fully, at the memory—“my utter unfitness; it 
will be a satisfaction, now that I can ride, to prove 
it on Snort. It will rather—redeem me in my 
own eyes.” 

“I can understand your feelings perfectly,” said 
the doctor cordially. As a matter of fact, the 
young man had no idea as to how thoroughly 
the doctor understood all of his feelings. “But 
I’m going to caution you about overdoing; it’s 
hard work, and rough at times, as I said a little 
while ago, but you can take it reasonably.” 

“I’m hard as nails, Doctor; quite fit.” 

The doctor nodded. “Yes, I believe you are. 
But there may be slumps, you know; I don’t want 
to alarm you, but—arm you for them.” 

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“You’re very kind; I will bear it in mind.” 
It was quite clear, however, that he considered 
the warning wholly superfluous; there was a 
triumphant strength and verve about him. 

“That’s our gate,” said the doctor, presently, 
and his pleasant voice warmed suddenly with 
pride. “Here we are at the camp!” He spoke 
of it as if it might be the New Jerusalem. “Of 
course, we’ve kept things very plain and crude 
but”—the doctor always tried to be modest about 
his camp, to take the attitude that there were 
other camps in the state, in the country, some of 
which, many of which, perhaps, might equal his, 
but his voice and his eyes betrayed him. This 
was his promised land, where, thanks to the ever¬ 
lasting mercy of things, he was to sojourn for his 
life’s rich afternoon after long years of ardent 
service. It was his creation and his recreation; 
his child. “You see, we have the little individual 
cabins with a shower bath in every one, and the 
central dining room, and we bring down a cook 
and a maid and a chore boy, and there’s the little 
bathhouse where you can have a hot tub—oh, we 
figure we’ve got camping down to a pretty fine 
art—all the glory and none of the grime! Mild 

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nights we sit round the camp fire, and when it’s 
nippy we have the Lodge, and the phonograph 
to dance by, and tables for bridge. You must 
join us whenever your duties will let you, 
Dean.” 

“Thank you,” said Dean Wolcott. “I fancy, 
however, that I shall be busy by day and sleepy 
by night, shan’t I?” The fact was that he was 
hungrily eager for the vigorous, muscle and 
nerve testing job he had undertaken, and rather 
fed up on bridge and dancing, Boston—his own 
very particular corner of it—having welcomed 
him home with a warmth which was soothing and 
healing after Dos Pozos. “And—who are your 
guests at camp, Doctor?” 

“They’re not my guests, really; it’s a coopera¬ 
tive affair, this lodge of ours in the wilderness 
—old friends, relatives, San Jose people, in the 
main; some from San Francisco; jolly, folksy 
folks who like to get their feet off the pave¬ 
ment.” 

“Does Ginger come?” He was very direct 
about it. 

“Oh, Ginger came once, long ago—twice, I 
believe, come to think of it—but I’ll tell you 

134 




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what it is, we’re not wild enough for Miss Ginger! 
We take some pretty hard trips—as you’ll find out 
<-—and do some pretty stiff stunts, but we haven’t 
her hell-for-leather, ride-’em-cowboy ideal!” 

Dean Wolcott nodded. “I shall want to see 
her, once, before I go east again,” he said, levelly. 

“Oh, certainly,” said Dr. Mayfield, hastily. 
“Certainly! And here’s Snort! Be careful how 
you go up to him, Dean; he has a very bad habit 
of pulling back, and he’s due to hurt himself or 
somebody else. I rather imagine he was tied up 
and beaten over the head when he was first 
broken to saddle, and ’Rome Ojeda hasn’t exactly 
—soothed him!” He paused in the unhitching of 
old Sam and watched the meeting between the 
quiet young man and the quivering wild-eyed 
horse. The moment was heavy with memory 
and challenge and promise. 

“Hello, old son!” said Dean Wolcott, cordially. 
Snort trumpeted and flung up his head at the 
touch, but the easterner’s voice was smooth. 
“Steady, boy. . . . Those fireworks don’t regis¬ 
ter with me at all, now. I’ve had almost a year 
of that sort of thing, you see. If you’re feeding 
your fancy on what you’re going to do to the 

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tenderfoot who rode you that historic day, you’re 
foiled. You and I will never dazzle the Big Week 
crowd, but I think you’ll find me remaining in or 
near the saddle during all our excursions to¬ 
gether.” The red roan cocked his sensitive ears 
and rolled his eyes whitely. 

Dr. Mayfield nodded approval. “That’s the 
idea, Dean. No quick movements. . . . Steady 
does it, with Snort. You know, I consider that 
there are very few essentially vicious horses; one 
now and then, of course, but in the main it’s only 
terror, terror and suspicion and the vivid memory 
of abuses.” 

“Doctor,” the young man wanted to know, “is 
it too late for a ride?” 

The doctor’s lips twitched. He liked the im¬ 
petuous youngness of it . . . the lad couldn’t 
wait to show him, and to show himself. . . . 
“No, of course not, Dean! I’ll saddle Ted—” 

He noted with satisfaction the authority with 
which Dean Wolcott swung himself into the 
saddle and set off, ahead of him, up the precipi¬ 
tous Government Trail, and he kept his keen eyes 
on the slim figure—the easy seat, the vigilant re¬ 
laxing, the sure coordination of body and brain. 

13 6 



CORDUROY 


Beyond question, he told himself, deeply content, 
the boy had learned to ride. When they fin¬ 
ished the twisting climb and came out on a level 
shoulder of the mountain he saw Dean Wolcott 
lean suddenly forward in the saddle, and Snort 
shot ahead in a plunging lope; horse and rider, 
a splendid, pulsing unit, flashed over the open 
space in the warm glow of the sunset, wheeled 
sharply at the foot of the next rise, and came 
back, Snort curveting, prancing, flinging up his 
handsome head, his flanks lathered with excite¬ 
ment rather than heat. 

“Well?” said the young man, nakedly bidding 
for praise. “Well, Doctor?” 

The doctor had not seen the serio-comic exhibi¬ 
tion at Dos Pozos but he had had it fully and 
faithfully described to him, so he was able to 
balance that day’s performance with this, and he 
was moved to warm commendation. “Upon my 
word, Dean, it’s astonishing! In less than a year’s 
time—and you’ve been physically fit for only a 
few months— Well, this has removed my last 
lingering doubt of your ability to swing the 
Ranger work. You’ve a good hand, a good seat; 
authority. I consider you”—he went on, speak- 

137 



CORDUROY 


ing with relish, bestowing his accolade, and the 
words sounded richer to the young man than the 
ones which had accompanied the pinning on of 
his medals—“I consider you a horseman.” 

Dean Wolcott swung himself smoothly to the 
ground; there was a silkiness of movement, now, 
a sure competence about him. “Then”—he col¬ 
ored hotly but his gaze was steady—“then you 
think I should not cut a ludicrous figure now, be¬ 
fore—’Rome Ojeda—Ginger?” 

“I should say not!” said Dr. Gurney Mayfield 
with immense heartiness. 

The easterner slipped a hand under Snort’s 
mane and the roan, trembling a little, let him 
rub his neck slowly and steadily. The young 
man took time, at last, to look about him. They 
were on the shoulder of a brown and rugged 
mountain, looking forward to range on range of 
other mountains, brown, gray, blue, purple in 
distance, piling up against the warm sky, looking 
back to the shining sea three thousand feet below 
them, with a crimson sun sinking swiftly on the 
edge of the world. With his hand on Snort’s 
arched neck it was a moment of highly colored 
happiness such as he had not known for eleven 

138 



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months—since he had taken his eye away from 
the kaleidoscope at Dos Pozos. 

“This is—tremendous, Doctor!” He gave a 
long sigh of utter satisfaction. “There aren’t any 
words for it.” Then he turned his attention to 
the doctor’s mount. “I’ve been so engrossed in 
my horse I haven’t noticed yours, Doctor. Splen¬ 
did, isn’t he?” 

“Well, now, I was beginning to wonder when 
you’d get round to old Ted,” said Dr. Mayfield. 
“He’s used to compliments, Ted is. Wouldn’t 
sell him for his weight in sapphires!” The horse, 
a tall and powerful creature, turned his head 
and listened to his master with delicately twitch¬ 
ing ears. “See those ears? Many’s the time 
Ted’s pointed a deer for me, before I saw it. 
He’s a gentleman; he’s a man and a brother; you 
can count on him in a tight place. I’ll have to 
tell you how he saved my life once. It was—but 
I guess we’ll have to be jogging along to supper, 
right now.” 

The young man, however, stood still, looking at 
him with an enhanced color in his keen and eager 
face. “If you’ve a moment more to spare, 
Doctor, I—I should like to make myself clear 

1.39 



CORDUROY 


to you on the subject of—Ginger; of my attitude 
toward Ginger.” 

The older man saw that this, too, was imme¬ 
diate. Just as he had had to justify himself in 
the saddle, so now he must clear his mind of a 
studied explanation. He wanted his supper but 
he said comfortably, “Of course, Dean.” 

He began with entire composure. “You know T 
the shape I was in last year, body and mind. I 
was a miserable weakling, a supersensitive, hys¬ 
terical idiot, and my sense of humor, which I had 
always considered as much a part of me as an 
arm or a leg, seemed to have been amputated. 
We—Ginger and I—were utter strangers; not 
strangers as a Boston girl and myself would 
have been, or Ginger and a western man, but— 
aliens. We had lived in different worlds; we 
spoke different tongues.” 

His friend nodded, understandingly. “That’s a 
fact, Dean. That’s a fact.” He could see that 
the young man was not only telling him—he was 
telling himself; urging himself to be convinced. 

“We mistook a romance, a sort of midsummer, 
moving picture romance,” Dean went on, “for a 
solid and lasting affection. And it is, of course,” 

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he was very clear and definite about it but his 
expression was rather bleak, “extremely fortunate 
that we became aware of our mistake when we 
did.” 

Again the doctor nodded. “I wonder if Gin¬ 
ger’s father and mother were not assailed by 
doubts of that sort,” he mused. “Far apart as 
the poles, they were—race, type, creed, training 
—and yet that marriage was a success; an ardent 
success. Of course, Ginger’s mother, Rosalia 
\ r aldes—and she was more beautiful than Ginger, 
I believe—died when the girl was a baby. I’ve 
often asked myself if a marriage of that sort can 
stand the slow procession of years, the humdrum 
cares, the fading—” 

“I think not,” Dean Wolcott cut in. “Mar¬ 
riage,” he stated with young sapience, “any 
marriage, where blood and breeding and back¬ 
ground are the same, presents sufficient difficul¬ 
ties of adjustment. It was undoubtedly a most 
fortunate termination.” He had pulled off his 
hat, and now a brisk wind traveled up from the 
sea and mussed the shining precision of his fine, 
fair hair, as a sudden confusion marred the pre¬ 
cision of his careful speech. “Doctor, I have— 

141 



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I needn’t say that I have the highest—that I ad¬ 
mire and shall always admire her beauty and 
charm—and—and courage and ability—and I 
hope you won’t misunderstand my motives, my 
feelings—” he got very warmly flushed and young 
looking and his gaze besought his friend for 
credence. “I must see Ginger and I must see 
Ojeda, simply as a matter of decent self-justifica¬ 
tion. It is intolerable for me to leave any place, 
any persons, with such a contemptible impres- 

• i * 

sion. 

“I can get your angle on it, Dean,” said the 
doctor, gravely, “but aren’t you overemphasizing 
—exaggerating—the whole affair? After all, 
why should you have been able to ride like a ‘buck- 
eroo’—a city man, an easterner? (Though a 
fellow from San Francisco or Los Angeles would 
have been in the same boat.) And besides, you 
were in no shape to stand such exertion; it was 
mad folly to attempt it. I blame myself bitterly 
for not having warned you against that sort of 

thing, but I never imagined-” 

* Again the young man interrupted him heed¬ 
lessly. “Yes, of course, the whole thing was 
absurd! If my sense of humor hadn’t been left 

142 





CORDUROY 


on the other side, if I had made determined 
comedy of myself for them, or if I’d had sense 
enough to refuse to ride”—but his flush deepened 
as he remembered why and how he had capitu¬ 
lated—“it need never have happened. But it did 
happen, Doctor. I did make a sickening spec¬ 
tacle of myself in the eyes of those people. I 
failed utterly according to their standards, and 
-—granted that their standards are immature and 
crude ones—the fact is intolerable to me. That’s 
why I’ve learned to ride, that’s why I wanted 
Snort; that’s why I must go once to Dos Pozos 
for a day, before I—before I put a period to 
that episode.” 

The doctor bent his head close to the Ted 
horse as he tightened his cinch. “I understand 
perfectly, Dean. The chapter is closed. You 
wish merely—and quite naturally—to show that 
girl and that buckeroo boy—that you can suc¬ 
ceed now along lines where you failed before.” 

“Exactly,” said the young man, gratefully. 

And that night, by candlelight in his cabin, 
Dr. Mayfield wrote to Ginger’s favorite aunt, and 
he said, in closing—“And so, my dear Miss 
Fanny, it is quite clear that the nice lad is still 

143 



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head over heels in love with Ginger, and if your 
diagnosis of her condition is correct, we shall 
be able to arrange matters very satisfactorily.” 

He folded the sheet and slipped it into its 
envelope and sat smiling to himself in the soft, 
uneven light. It was going to be a very pleasant 
undertaking, he thought, to bring these two fine 
young things together—to be the instrument, in 
a world where so much went stupidly or viciously 
wrong, of setting something right. 



CHAPTER IX 


B EFORE he went back to San Jose Dr. 
Mayfield took keen satisfaction in intro¬ 
ducing Dean Wolcott to the precipitous 
trails and the secret fastnesses of the wild land 
he loved, and in presenting him to the people 
on widely separated ranches. Always he said, 
with possessive pride, “I want you to shake hands 
with a mighty good friend of mine, your new 
Forest Ranger!” 

The regular Ranger stayed a fortnight with 
his deputy before he went on his leave and left 
the easterner in full possession of the job. The 
young man told himself that never in all his life 
—a singularly serene one, save for the months 
in France and the episode of Dos Pozos—had 
he been so solidly happy. 

He headquartered in a snug cottage near 
Post’s and his housekeeping was an amused de¬ 
light to him. He had three cabins at various 
points on his trails and gypsy, picnicking sojourns 

145 


CORDUROY 


in them were novel and fascinating. He rejoiced 
in a daily, almost hourly, sense of increased vigor; 
he had a red-blooded feeling of boundless en¬ 
durance. Always he had lived—and the entire 
Wolcott connection, as his cousin in Boston would 
have expressed it—had lived—in their mentali¬ 
ties; they had been—and rather prided them¬ 
selves on being—absent from the body and 
present with the brain; they had stayed upstairs 
in their minds. Now he was to know the hearty 
comfort of coming down and living lustily in 
his flesh; to revel frankly and sensuously in the 
sound young body which had come back to him. 
It was good to be too hot (for the sun scorched 
sometimes on the bare hillsides) and to go into 
the deep shade; to be chilled on a long ride home 
along the coast and to build up a roaring fire and 
bask in it; to be ravenously hungry, when he 
came late to his cabins, and to make himself an 
enormous meal and eat enormously of it; to be 
healthily, heartily tired and to tumble into bed 
and sleep nine dark and dreamless hours. 

It was best of all, he thought, to be part of the 
large silence of the mountains and the sea. The 
Wolcotts were talkers and all their friends were 

146 



CORDUROY 


talkers. They talked entertainingly and well but 
they talked most of the time, and they had in¬ 
sisted that the Happy Warrior should converse 
unsparingly of all he had seen and done, of all 
that had been done to him, of his actions and 
reactions in the red welter of conflict. Therefore, 
devoted as he was to the doctor and much as he 
appreciated the time and pains the Ranger had 
spent upon him, he was glad to be alone with 
Snort, with the extra horse whom the Ranger 
had left as a sort of spare tire, and the Ranger’s 
dog, a small, shabby Airedale of reserved man¬ 
ner. Making his daily rides according to schedule 
he formed the habit of passing by the infrequent 
ranch houses without a hail: later he would be 
more clubby with the cordially kind people within 
them, but for the present he desired to be like 
the stout (and, he recalled, incorrectly named) 
gentleman of the well-known sonnet—silent upon 
a peak in Darien. 

There were a great many peaks for him to 
be silent upon and he rode tirelessly from one to 
the other. Ordinarily, his various “beats,” as 
the Ranger had jocularly called them, were so 
arranged that he might serve himself with human 

147 



CORDUROY 


society at least every forty-eight hours, but he 
determined upon a week’s fast from the sight and 
sound of his fellows. By arriving late at his 
headquarters—the cabin at Post’s—and leaving 
early, by passing Slate’s Springs with its lure 
of a hot and comforting meal, making his own 
slender supper, and lodging in his sleeping bag 
on the ground, he was able to manage his seven 
days hermiting, and he told himself that—with 
every muscle in play—it was still the most perfect 
rest he had ever known. 

He believed that he now understood Snort per¬ 
fectly, and that Snort was on the way to under¬ 
standing him. Rusty, the Ranger’s dog, had a 
faintly scornful air of understanding him only 
too well; he sat disdainfully aloof and watched 
the Bostonian at his saddling, his fire building, 
his camp making, with an air of weary tolerance, 
and he was even guilty of yawning in the young 
man’s face. 

“All right, old top,” Dean Wolcott would say 
to him, “I dare say I’m a pale imitation of your 
master, and that I shall never quite reach the 
picturesqueness and dash of the ‘Virginian,’ but 

148 



CORDUROY 


you might give me credit for coming on, you 
know.” 

On the third night of silence he camped on 
Pine Ridge. He had climbed the tortuous Golden 
Stairs in the golden, burning afternoon, and man 
and horse and dog were weary and warm. Once, 
on a narrow and treacherous bit of trail, a rattler 
had sounded his warning just ahead of them, and 
Snort, with a swift reversion to his earlier manner, 
had trumpeted, reared, whirled dangerously, but 
his rider had sat him capably until he was calmed, 
had dismounted and crept forward, reins over his 
arm, revolver in hand, located the venomous 
sound, taken cool aim, and shot the big snake 
neatly in two. Then, remembering the doctor’s 
warning, had stamped on its head for good 
measure before he cut off the twelve rattles. 
“Well, Rusty, not so bad, eh?” he had inquired 
complacently of the Airedale, and the dog had 
replied with a brief and grudging wag of his 
shabby tail. 

He had watered his horse, staked him out to 
graze, made his supper and fed Rusty, spread 
his sleeping bag on a foundation of crisp leaves, 
lighted his pipe, folded his arms beneath his 

149 



CORDUROY 


head; reveled. He was the only human being 
in forty precipitous miles; sometimes the dog 
gave a sleepy and luxurious sigh; there was the 
low sound of Snort’s cropping of the dry grass; 
twice a twilight bird dropped his six silver notes 

into the silence; otherwise, it was incredibly still. 

* 

Beyond him there was another mountain which 
presented a profile to him with a forest of young 
pines dark against an apricot sky; far below, 
faintly seen, the sea shone again like an abalone 
shell. Presently the glow faded and the trees 
turned black, and a fairy-tale moon came out, 
primly attended by one pale star. 

He was up at dawn and off at six for his ride 
to Tassajara, tingling with zestful well-being. 
He made a swift detour about the lively Springs, 
picked up Tony’s Trail and followed it into the 
heat of the afternoon, made an early camp at 
Willow Creek and was off again in the morning 
dew, headed, the long way round, for home. Past 
Shovel Handle Creek, through Strawberry Valley, 
gay as a garden with little flowers of yellow 
and magenta and hearty pink, up and up, and up 
again, unceasingly, to the summit of Marble Peak. 

150 



CORDUROY 


He loosened his cinch, lighted his pipe, granted 
himself a half hour for gazing. 

He understood perfectly how the gentleman 
had felt in Darien. It was beyond words, above 
words. Not even the Wolcott connection could 
do it justice. 

Then, greatly to his surprise, he found that he 
didn’t want to be silent any longer. He wanted 
to talk, not to Snort and the tolerant Airedale, 
but to some one who would reply. He wanted to 
point out Lost Valley, far below and far away; 
to explain about the Ventana—how once, the old¬ 
est settlers said, it had been closed across the top 
of that sharp, square-cut space in the mountain’s 
upper edge, making a perfect ventana —window; 
he needed a looker and a listener in order that 
he might demonstrate how perfectly he remem¬ 
bered all the peaks and places the doctor and the 
Ranger had named to him. It was probable that 
he would have been moved to quote a restrained 
amount of poetry; the Wolcotts quoted a good 
deal, not to be bookish or superior, but because 
of their nice sense of values; people like Keats 
and Tennyson had said these things so handily, 
had brought the art of poetic expression to a 

Hi 



CORDUROY 


fine point while the Wolcott connection was busy 
with the law and medicine and anthropology. . . . 

Now he recalled that the stout (and mis¬ 
named) gentleman upon the peak in Darien could 
be silent as long as he chose and then address 
his men (there was distinct mention of them in 
the sonnet) and receive their respectful raptures. 
He, however, could only address, unavailingly, a 
horse and a frankly bored dog, so, with swift 
decision, he tightened his cinch again and set 
off down the mountainside in the direction of 
Slate’s. He would change his plan, make port 
there, hearten himself with cheerful human inter¬ 
course and toothsome fare, and return to Post’s 
next day. His beasts seemed to catch his idea 
and approve it, and they made excellent speed. 

But Slate’s was deserted. No promising smoke 
curled out of the chimney; his hail brought no 
reply, but echoed hollowly against the big barn. 
It was evidently one of the rare occasions when 
the head of the house made a saddle trip over 
the long trail to the Post Office at Big Sur, and 
his wife might be far afield on some ranch matter. 
There was nothing for it but to push on to his 

152 



CORDUROY 


headquarters at Post’s, by the long route, now; 
he would not reach there until well after dark. 

He set out, doggedly and joylessly. He could 
not even take time for a rest and a meal; he 
munched at crackers and raisins as he rode. 
Rusty began to lag wearily behind and he caught 
him by the collar and dragged him up and across 
his saddle and held him there, crouched and 
disapproving, his tail clamped dismally down. 
He passed three or four little deserted houses 
on long-abandoned ranches; it was strange, what¬ 
ever could have brought people into that wilder¬ 
ness; it was pitiful to think of the losing fight 
they must have put up before they admitted 
themselves beaten and went away. Sometimes 
he drew rein and studied them; at one there was 
a rattlesnake asleep in the sun on the worn sill 
of the open door; after a little while, to ac¬ 
centuate his loneliness, the sun went under a 
cloud and a damp and penetrating fog rushed in 
from the sea; then the little, gray, ghostly houses 
seemed to shiver and shrink. He found himself 
picturing the people who had pioneered in them 
—the men who had come back to them at meal¬ 
times, aching-tired and lagging with discourage- 

153 



CORDUROY 


ment, the women who had swept the sagging 
floors and tacked up calico curtains; women who 
had said, red-eyed, “It’s more’n a month since 
we’ve had the mail,” and the other sort of women, 
who had said—“Look! My seeds are cornin’ 
up a’ready! Wed! have a truck garden here 
before you can say ‘Jack Robinson!’ ” 

Visualizing them kept him occupied for several 
miles and when he had left them all behind and 
found the gray emptiness of the world more and 
more trying he began to recite to himself— 
verse, fragments of orations, scraps of old high 
school debates. . . . 

My name is Norval; on the Grampian hills 
My father feeds his flocks — 

What was the rest of it? Where was it from? 
He must have learned it years ago, in grammar 
school, probably. Well, now, he exulted, this was 
something to do; he would remember the next 
line; he would remember the poem or whatever 
the lines came from, the author. 

Even Snort, the wire-fibered, fire-breathing 
Snort, was lagging. Overridden! Dean Wolcott 
was thankful Dr. Mayfield needn’t know. And 

U4 



CORDUROY 


he, himself?—was he overridden and under¬ 
talked? The doctor had been good enough to 
caution him, but he—fat-headed fool—hadn’t 
listened or heeded. There would be slumps, his 
friend had said. There was one now, right 
enough; perhaps he’d better dismount and make 
camp in the next sheltered hollow. No; he must 
keep on; he might meet the Slate’s Spring people, 
and go back with them, or at least, for a few 
heartening moments, hear human speech, the 
blessed sound of talk. 

My name is Norval; on the Grampian hills — 

Just as soon as he had located and pigeonholed 
that thing he would be all right. He was all 
right now, in his body—no sense of lameness or 
weakness; it was just this childish, contemptible 
lonesomeness when he wasn’t actually alone—the 
warm body of his horse beneath him, the dog— 
even if he wasn’t a very expansive dog—across his 
saddle. They came out of a lush green canon with 
ferns and tall brakes and delicate blooms and 
a rushing silver stream where the dampness 
pressed in to the marrow, climbed a stiff trail. 
Then he looked down, with a gasp, upon a chim- 

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ney with a curl of smoke issuing from it; it was 
not able to mount into the air on account of 
the fog but it made a brave start. 

Dean Wolcott had to gather his thoughts be¬ 
fore he could place exactly where he was. This 
must be the ranch of Mateo Golinda, the Span¬ 
iard, and his American wife. The doctor and the 
Ranger had spoken to him of the Golindas and 
said that he must be sure to call upon them, but 
he had forgotten, and then he had entered on his 
period of silence. He was so glad that he wanted 
to swing his hat and shout. Now he was to be 
among his kind again, with limitations, of course. 
The converse would be crude and the fare would 
be rough; there would be no point of mental con¬ 
tact. There would be—he grinned stiffly at the 
absurdity—no afternoon tea; chilled and fog- 
drenched as he was, he would have to wait for the 
late supper, if, indeed, it was his good fortune 
to be invited to remain. 

There was no dizzy sum, no cherished treasure 
he would not part with for tea, hot and hearten¬ 
ing tea in a delicate cup, and the sort of talk 
which nourished the mind. And an open fire. 
But there would be a “cookstove,” at least, and 

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it would give out comforting warmth while the 
woman was getting supper ... he would be 
warm. . . . 

He had let Rusty down and they were making 
for the house at a smooth running walk. He 
would judge what sort she was, Mrs. Golinda; 
perhaps he could ask her to make him—or to let 
him make himself—a cup of tea; he could say 
quite honestly that he was cold and overdone. He 
knew people of that sort called tea “eating be¬ 
tween meals” or “piecing,” but he didn’t care 
what she called it if only he could have it. He 
got awkwardly down in the yard and found that 
he was shivering uncontrollably and that his teeth 
were chattering, and he felt odd and confused. 
He stood still and made himself rehearse for an 
instant. He would march up to the door, he 
would knock at the door, and she would come 
—she must be home, with that smoke charging 
at the fog!—and he would take off his hat, and 
try to keep from shaking and jerking, and say 
—“My name is Dean Wolcott. I am the new 
Forest Ranger. May I—” 

But he could not wait to complete his rehearsal. 
He found himself moving swiftly upon the small, 

U7 



CORDUROY 


silvered house. It was very old and weathered 
looking; it made him think a little of the houses 
on the fog-drenched islands in Maine. He stood 
upon the gray, worn step and rapped with blue 
knuckles, and almost instantly he heard the sound 
of quick, light feet coming toward him, and the 
door flew open. 

The woman who stood there was not quite 
young, but she would never be old. She wore a 
smock of dull blue linen and her very smooth 
brown hair was sleekly parted and coiled, and 
she looked at him keenly and gladly. Her eyes 
were a dark hazel, fearless and friendly, and 
very bright. 

He opened his lips and tried to keep his teeth 
from chattering. “My name—” he began, stead¬ 
ily enough, “my name—’’ and then confusion and 
chaos descended upon him. He might have been 
back in the hospital in England, fighting for 
memory through black clouds. “ ‘My name is 
Norval—■ ” he said, rapidly, and broke off gasp¬ 
ing, horrified. 

The woman stared at him for the fraction of 
a second, her eyes widening; then they narrowed 
and warmed and fine little lines came round the 

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corners of them and she laughed aloud, delight¬ 
edly. “Well,” she said, “aren’t you a long way 
from the Grampian hills? Come in! Do come 
in—I was just having to drink my tea all alone!” 



CHAPTER X 


H E stumbled over the threshold and 
found himself in an amazing room. 
He was to observe, later on, that two 
partitions had been knocked out to make three 
cubby-holes into a living room of pleasant dimen¬ 
sions, that the floor sagged and that the walls 
slanted, that the raftered ceiling was rough: at 
the moment he was aware only of a leaping, crack¬ 
ling fire on the hearth, of a Chinese wicker tea 
table drawn up before it with a wicker armchair 
on each side, and—beyond these joyful things— 
shelves of books, books, books, running along one 
entire end of the place; the gleam of good brass 
in the firelight; good prints on the walls. 

“You are Mr. Wolcott, of course,” the woman 
said. “And I am Margaret Golinda—but you 
know that! We have been hoping you would 
come to see us. Sit down, and pull your chair 
closer to the fire—you must be fog-chilled to your 
marrow! Tea is just ready and piping hot—I 

160 


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just lifted the kettle off as you knocked I You see, 
I always pull up another chair for tea, on the 
hope that Mateo may come in and join me—and 
he does, once in a blue moon!” Fine little lines 
of mirth framed her eyes again. “He does like 
it, when he can spare the half hour, but I dare 
say it’s a slothful habit for ranchers!” 

“It’s a heavenly habit,” said Dean Wolcott, 
fervently. He leaned toward the fire, holding his 
stiff fingers in the stinging, scorching heat. “I 
must ask your pardon, Mrs. Golinda, for what 
must have seemed my clumsy facetiousness, just 
now. I will tell you how I came to say—” 

“Ah, but you mustn’t tell me anything until 
you’ve had your first cup,” she said quickly, giving 
him a keen glance. She handed him his tea in 
pale green china, with a thin old silver spoon, 
and watched him, smiling. “You are an easterner, 
I have heard, and you haven’t realized what our 
summers can be in Monterey County! Many 
mooded, they are. One can shiver—and perspire 
—in two hours!” She talked on in her very low, 
very clear voice, and there was no chance for 
him to speak until he had drained his cup. “Now 
—the second cup, and toast, this time, with it, 

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and some of our wild sage honey—we brag about 
our honey, Mr. Wolcott.” She filled his cup 
again, and this time she gave him an oblong wicker 
tray to hold on his knees, with a pale green plate 
of toast and a small fat pot of amber honey, 
and she kept on talking. He knew that she 
was talking so that he would not have to talk. 

“You must have another cup—all really sincere 
tea drinkers take three!” He took it docilely. 
“I can see that you’re rather surprised at my little 
house; tea tables and brass and prints amaze you 
—here? And everything came here on the back 
of a mule, over that trail, for there is no road be¬ 
yond the Gomez ranch, as you know. There were 
eighty loads!” She shook her sleek head, sigh¬ 
ing a little at the memory. “But I lost only two 
cups and one saucer! Now, I wonder if you’ll 
pardon my leaving you for a few moments? 
There’s something rather urgent in the oven!” 
She went swiftly out of the room and closed the 
door behind her, and for a moment or two he 
heard sounds of activity in the kitchen—an oven 
door opened and closed again, a faucet turned 
on and off. Then he stopped listening and settled 
limply and luxuriously down into his armchair. 

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. -■ —— ■ ■ ■■■ ■ ■ ■ ■' ■■■■■■ ■■ ■■■ ■ ■■ i... ■■■■■■- 

There was a cushion on the back which fitted into 
his neck as if it had been measured for him, and 
he yielded body and brain to a delicious drowsi¬ 
ness; he would hear her step, and rouse himself 
before she opened the door. An old banjo clock 
on the wall stated that it was twenty minutes past 
five . . . she would doubtless be back in five 
minutes and then he would chat a few moments, 
and be on his way again. . . . 

He heard her step, just as he had known he 
would, and roused himself, and looked at the 
clock to see if it had been more than five minutes, 
but he could not see the clock very clearly. . . . 
He must be half blind with sleep. . . . He got 
up out of his chair and went close to it, and saw 
that it was twenty minutes before seven, and 
the room was soft with dusk. 

“I’ve been gone a fearful time,’’ said Mrs. 
Golinda, regretfully. “My wicked little horse 
elected not to be caught and put in the barn, and 
we’ve been holding a sort of field day all over 
the home ranch!” She stirred the fire to bright¬ 
ness and threw on fresh wood. “I hope you 
helped yourself to tea and toast and found some- 

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thing to read—or did you just rest and get 
warmed through again?” 

“I just rested and basked,” said Dean Wolcott, 
gratefully, “but I must be off now, for I won’t 
make Post’s before nine o’clock and—” he 
stopped aghast—“good heavens, my horse! I’ve 
left him standing in the fog, when he was—” 

“Oh, but I put him up, directly I went out,” 
said his hostess, easily. “Of course you’re going 
to stop the night with us. What do you suppose 
Mateo—with his traditions of Spanish hospitality 
—would say to me if I confessed to having you 
here and letting you go ? We can put you up quite 
nicely, and you can fancy what it means to us 
to have a house guest! Should you like to go 
to your room, now?” 

She did not wait for him to answer but stepped 
briskly toward another door. “This way—and a 
step down! My funny little house is on four 
different levels, but I like it. Some day, when 
our ship comes in, we mean to have sleeping 
porches—but it takes a long time for a ship to 
come in, on this foggy coast—and to come ashore 
as high as this!” She laughed with entire con¬ 
tentment. “Hot water in the pitcher, and towels 

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there, do you see? Perhaps I’d better light your 
candle—these tiny windows let in very little light 
after the sun sets.” She lighted a candle in a 
satiny brass candlestick and went away, and left 
him to the comfort of hot water and rough, 
clean towels, and presently he heard a hail from 
without and her glad answer, and then exchange 
of rippling Spanish. 

Mateo Golinda was a rather small, middle- 
aged Spaniard with piercing eyes and a fine 
aquiline nose, and his welcome was as picturesque 
and colorful as if it had been given in his father’s 
native Valencia. Dean Wolcott remembered now, 
the things the doctor had told him of this house¬ 
hold, and he drank the wine of astonishment. 
Margaret Burton had come into the Big Sur 
country on a sketching trip; she had left it only 
long enough to go home and tell her aghast and 
staggered family that she was to marry a Spanish 
rancher who spoke almost no English, to live 
with him on his difficult ranch, fifteen high and 
winding miles from a telephone. The young man 
had seen a generous portion of the world consid¬ 
ering his years, and he came to regard this as 
the most remarkable marriage he had ever known; 

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it could not, he felt, have succeeded so signally 
if either Margaret Burton or Mateo Golinda 
had brought less to it. They worked out of 
doors like peasants, both of them, like pioneers, 
but when they came into the silver-gray house 
they left the toil behind them; they came into a 
gentle world of candlelight and firelight, of 
shining brass and thin, old silver spoons, of lim¬ 
ber-covered ancient Spanish books; probably 
nothing else would so have completed the picture 
for Dean Wolcott as to find the current number 
of the Atlantic Monthly in one of the Chinese 
chairs. 

The supper was excellent and a beautiful and 
dignified dog sat a little withdrawn, watching his 
master worshipfully. 

“Mateo,” said Mrs. Golinda, after Dean had 
noticed and commented upon him, “let us show 
Mr. Wolcott how seriously he takes his position. 
You see, Mr. Wolcott, Mateo had Lobo before 
he had me and Lobo wishes that point to be very 
clear. He likes me—he is even fond of me— 
but he considers me simply another of his master’s 
possessions, and a later and less important one.” 

“Dame tu mano,” said the Spaniard, softly, 

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reaching his brown and work-hardened hand 
across the table to his wife, who laid her own 
within it. Instantly the dog arose, the pupils of 
his golden eyes contracting, and went close to 
Margaret Golinda, growling. When she drew 
her hand away he ceased growling and wagged 
his plumy tail, slowly, approvingly, and after an 
instant, to make sure the incident would not be 
repeated, he returned to his place. “You see?” 
said his mistress, laughing. “Lobo likes women as 
many persons like dogs—‘in their place!’ ” 
Dean Wolcott felt his throat tighten, suddenly, 
but it was not because of Lobo’s jealous fealty; 
it was because these people who had worked un¬ 
ceasingly for years to win a livelihood from their 
steep and stubborn acres, who had sometimes 
seen only each other for weeks on end, whose 
existence was narrow and circumscribed, accord¬ 
ing to the ordinary standard, had kept the gleam 
alight; still said—“Give me your hand.” And 
—good heavens—how they had given each other 
a hand, late and early, in good weather and 
bad weather, in rich seasons and barren sea¬ 
sons; it was sign and symbol. Now the ranch 
was almost clear; now Mateo Golinda spoke a 

167 



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careful and correct English and his wife a fluent 
Spanish; now, year by year, something of com¬ 
fort was added, something of hardship was con¬ 
quered. It was a thing to have seen; a thing to 
remember. 

They set him on his way in the pearly morn¬ 
ing, and not by look or word did Margaret 
Golinda betray her knowledge of his condition 
on arriving the day before. When he had tried 
the second time to explain she had stopped him 
again. “It was odd that you’d been thinking 
of that old thing—I expect you learned it in 
the grammar grades as I did?—for it had come 
into my mind just a few days ago, when I was 
watching the sheep for Mateo. One remembers 
the old things, in places like this!” And when 
he rode away they called after him to come soon 
again, to make them a regular port of call. 
There was no need to urge him; the weathered 
gray house on the high hill above the sea would 
always spell sanctuary to him; it would always 
be what he would have called, twenty years 
earlier, “King’s X!” 

That afternoon he wrote to an old Harvard 
friend who lived in San Francisco and was ar- 

168 



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dently interested in a troop of Boy Scouts in one 
of the poorer portions of the city; he had stopped 
over with him for two days on his way to Mon¬ 
terey. 

I want you to send me one of your boys for 
the rest of the summer [he wrote], for I find that 
the solitude I so earnestly wanted is being served 
to me in rather too large portions. I see that I 
want and need companionship, of a sort. But, 
please, don’t send me your prize lad, your huskiest 
and handiest Scout! I want instead the unlikeliest 
one in your troop. I want the most utter little 
gutter snipe you can lay hands on, and the most 
ignorant of the woods and wilds. What I need— 
which you have already guessed and I may as well 
confess—is a young person to whom I can exhibit 
my new-found wisdom; I want a trusting child 
who will look up to me and regard me as a bril¬ 
liant and dashing admixture of Daniel Boone and 
Dan Beard and Bill Hart. Kindly ship same to 
me charges paid and I will at once remit! 

His friend replied at once and told him, rather 
doubtfully, that in Elmer Bunty he had a youth 
who fulfilled all his specifications and more, but 
if, after a week or so, he found him more than 
he could stomach he might return him; the boy 
would be told that he was going for a fortnight 

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only. He was an orphan and made his home, 
so-called, with a vinegar-visaged aunt and a mean 
and hectoring girl cousin; a really determined 
daddy longlegs could put him to flight. He—the 
friend of Dean Wolcott—had had something of 
a chore to make the aunt consent to the outing 
for Elmer; she had planned for him to spend his 
summer vacation in some gainful occupation, and 
he had only succeeded by painting a dark picture 
of the boy’s physical unfitness and the benefits 
which would unfailingly accrue to him. Not that 
the lady was unduly moved at that, but she had 
had, she asserted, more than her share of doc¬ 
tor’s bills for Elmer before—and she just taking 
him in and doing for him like he was her own, 
and precious little thanks for it, too! Dean 
Wolcott got a very sharp pen picture of Elmer’s 
aunt and he answered his friend immediately and 
told him to send the boy, and to tell his relative 
that he should receive a salary of ten dollars a 
week for such services as he might prove able 
to render, and that he would see that he sent 
the lion’s share home to her. 

The boy arrived at Pfeiffer’s by stage a few 

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days later. He was, he stated, thirteen, but it 
seemed improbable. He was thin to emaciation 
—pipe-stem arms and legs which dangled from 
his lean little torso as if they hardly belonged to 
it but had been carelessly hooked on—a hollow 
chest, huge, flanging ears which looked ready to 
fly away with his pinched small face and quite 
capable of doing it, friendly and frightened eyes, 
and gopher teeth, all of which he was never able 
to keep in his mouth at the same time. 

He sat beside the good-natured driver, huddled 
in the corner of the seat and clinging desperately 
to the iron rod which supported the top of the 
stage, and the man told Dean that he didn’t be¬ 
lieve the poor young one had shifted his position 
once since they had left Monterey. 

“Hello, old top!” said Dean, robustly, swing¬ 
ing him to the ground. “Come along and meet 
Snort and Rusty, and your pony!” (He had 
succeeded in renting a small and amiable old 
horse for him from one of the ranchers.) 

The boy went with him, setting his cramped 
legs stiffly to walk again. He kept the Ranger’s 
hand and shrank back against him when they 
came nearer the animals. “Does he bite?” he 



CORDUROY 


whispered when the Airedale rose languidly and 
approached him, sniffing indifferently. “Do— 
do they kick?” he wanted fearfully to know when 
he found himself within range of the horses’ 
heels. 

“Never!” said the Ranger, cheerily. He tied 
Elmer’s bundle to his own saddle and lifted him 
on to the small horse. “Let’s see about these 
stirrups—must always have your stirrups right, 
Scout.” He adjusted them swiftly and capably. 
“Now, then, all set?” 

“I g-guess so,” said Elmer Bunty, palely. 

“We’re just going to walk our horses, this 
time—and lots of times till you get used to it. 
Then we’ll ‘Ride ’em, Cowboy!’ like they do in 
the movies, won’t we?” 

“I g-guess so,” said the Scout again. 

Dean sprang into his saddle and spoke to the 
two horses, and they set off at a brisk walk, and 
instantly the boy leaned forward and clutched 
the pommel of his small saddle desperately with 
both thin hands. 

“Oh, come, Scout, that will never do—hanging 
on that way! That’s what we call (‘we,’ he 
grinned to himself) ‘pulling leather,’ and any 

172 



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regular cow-puncher would rather break his neck 
than be caught doing it! It simply isn’t done 
in these circles, old top. Just try letting go, and 
holding your reins, and keeping the balls of your 
feet in the stirrups, and sitting easy —like this, 
see? You can’t fall off, and even if you could, 
I’m right here to catch you!” 

The Scout reluctantly unclasped his small claws 
and sat erect. He was the color of thriftily 
skimmed milk, his eyes rolled with terror, and he 
kept swallowing hard. 

Snort, impatient at the snail’s pace, pranced 
and curvetted, but the boy’s mount went sedately, 
and Dean kept up a running fire of casual talk, 
and at the end of ten minutes he could see that 
his lad was breathing more easily. 

“That’s right,” he said, cordially. “Now 
you’re letting yourself go! Isn’t it fine? Isn’t it 
fun?” 

“Yes, sir,” said the Scout. After an instant, 
nodding toward the drooping head of his steed, 
he inquired, “What’s his name?” 

“His name is Mabel,” answered Dean, gravely. 

“Oh . . said Elmer, pondering. “Is he—” 
he hesitated delicately, “is he a lady horse?” 

173 



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“He is a lady horse. Almost, I should say, 
by the gentleness of this oresent performance, a 
perfect lady.” 

They rode in silence for a few minutes. Then, 
“Mabel is a nice, pretty name,” said the child, 
thoughtfully. “I think it’s a nicer name than 
Edna . . . Edna,” he added, after an instant of 
burdened silence, “is my cousin’s name. . . .” 

“I see,” said the Ranger. “Now, do you think 
you would care to have Mabel walk just a trifle 
faster?” 

“Would he—stop again if I—if I didn’t care 
for it?” 

“Instantly, when you pull on the reins and say 
‘whoa,’ firmly and decisively. It’s just like put¬ 
ting on a brake, you know. All set?” He chir¬ 
ruped to Mabel who changed from a walk to 
a languid trot. 

At once, involuntarily, the Scout clung to his 
pommel as to the Rock of Ages, but after a 
shamed moment he let go of it and sat up again. 

“Snappy work!” said the Ranger, cordially, 
once more. 

“I g-guess,” said Elmer Bunty, a faint and fur¬ 
tive pink coming into his small face, speaking 

174 




CORDUROY 


jerkily with the motion of the clumsy old horse, 
“I g-guess Edna c-couldn’t c-call me ’Fraid-Cat if 
she s-saw me now!” 

There was the most astonishing amount of 
satisfaction, Dean Wolcott was to discover, to 
be derived from the presence of an admittedly 
inferior and worshipful companion. Never be¬ 
fore had he been looked up to in this fashion. 
He had been quite frank in writing to his San 
Francisco friend, but he had not known, then, 
how much he wanted the qualities he was order¬ 
ing. A Wolcott among Wolcotts, he had been 
treated as one of them, of course; a Wolcott 
had also been treated like a Wolcott at Dos 
Pozos but in a very different sense indeed; to 
Elmer Bunty he was the final word in horseman¬ 
ship, in marksmanship, in woodcraft, in courage 
and wide wisdom. The young man, holding him¬ 
self up to his own hearty mirth, nevertheless en¬ 
joyed it shamelessly. One thing he had not 
counted upon, however, was his immediate fond¬ 
ness for the boy; it was odd that so unbeautiful 
and unpromising a youth should seem to dive 
headlong into his affections, but this was exactly 
what he had done. It was a positive pleasure 

175 



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to feed him until his pallid skin grew visibly more 
taut, to tuck him up at night with an extra blanket 
pulled high about his meager neck, to guide and 
guard him in his timid steps forward into a red- 
blooded world. 

Rusty, the Airedale, adopted him at once. 
Elmer had never had a dog; his aunt disliked and 
disapproved of them on sound, economic princi¬ 
ples and held, quite reasonably, that they made 
extra work and “dirtied up a house,” and he had 
not known how to go about the business of con¬ 
ciliating Rusty, but he had not needed to know; 
Rusty had known for both of them. He still 
treated the new Ranger with a grudging civility, 
but the Scout was taken into his heart on the sec¬ 
ond day. He taught him to play; he unlocked 
starved chambers in his flat little chest, and in 
the short evenings when Dean Wolcott read aloud 
from stout and hearty boy-books he charged con¬ 
tentedly beside the lad, his chin on the small sharp 
knee. 



CHAPTER XI 


T HE middle of July Ginger’s Aunt Fan 
began writing her and begging her 
earnestly to come to San Francisco and 
visit her at the St. Agnes. She was lonely and 
blue, she wrote, and although she ate less than 
a microbe she now tipped the scales at a hundred 
and seventy-three pounds, and a New York friend 
had written her that Jim Featherstone was “step¬ 
ping out’’ with a woman young enough to be his 
daughter—not that she cared, of course; her 
warm wish was to see old Jim happy, for he was 
a prince if ever there was one, but not to have 
him make a fool of himself. 

Ranch affairs were too numerous and pressing 
when the first letter came, but after three of 
them, and a breathless long distance telephone 
call, the girl put the reins into Estrada’s brown 
and weathered hands and went north. It had 
been a hard and busy season and she found her¬ 
self, oddly, a little tired; it was not like her to 

177 


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be tired. She would like a week or two of brisk 
San Francisco climate, a lecture, a play; perhaps, 
most of all, she would be glad to be away from 
’Rome Ojeda’s ardent importunities. She was 
quite sure that she was never going to marry 
’Rome, but he was just as sure that she was, and 
was beginning to get boisterous and vehement 
about it, and was drinking a good deal, and she 
was rather worn with the struggle. Sometimes 
she thought it might be simpler to marry him . . . 
but she knew that it wouldn’t be anything else. 

This time her Aunt Fan met her without a 
criticism of her clothes. “Well,” she said, looking 
her over pleasantly, “I’ll say this—if you didn’t 
get anything else out of that—that Wolcott epi¬ 
sode, you learned how to dress, and that's some¬ 
thingf I suppose everything you bought in the 
east is as good as new; that’s what it is to be a 
string-bean figure. I've burst through every rag 
of mine like an elephant through a jungle; I expect 
any day now I’ll have to get a larger apartment! 
My dear,” she shook her intricately waved head, 
“you simply can’t imagine how lucky you are— 
never having to go into shops and ask for ‘out- 
sizes’ ; never have to let saleswomen as flat as 

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paper dolls show you their ‘stylish stouts’ and 
patronize you! I’m about discouraged, Ginger. 
And that’s one reason”—she spoke more briskly— 
“why I’m going down to the doctor’s camp. He’s 
asked me, year after year, but you know how I 
hate the country; ranches are bad enough, but 
camps— Well, I know I’d lose there—rough 
fare, and exercise. The doctor says I’d lose.” 

Ginger tried to be grave and sympathetic. She 
thought her Aunt Fan would enjoy it, and it was 
surely only right to go, when the doctor had asked 
her so often. “And you mustn’t let me keep you, 
Aunt Fan, if you want to go at once. I intended 
to stay only a few days with you.” 

Mrs. Featherstone opened her prominent blue 
eyes. “But I want you to go with me, child! You 
must go with me !” 

“Oh, Aunt Fan, that’s dear of you, but I don’t 
believe I can—possibly.” 

“Nonsense! Of course you can—what’s Estrada 
for, I’d like to know? The doctor particularly 
wanted you to come, too. He says there’s a lively 
bunch of young people this season.” 

“I know,” said Ginger. “He wrote and asked 
me, but I told him I was too busy.” She had the 

179 



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feeling that she did not care to be with a bunch 
of lively young people; she did not feel like a 
lively young person herself; she felt like a serious- 
minded proprietor of a big and busy ranch, and 
she meant to go east again in the winter and feel 
a little like Mary Wiley. 

“Well, you’re not too busy—that’s too absurd 
for words, Ginger—and you are going! Let’s 
see—this is Tuesday. You can telephone Manuela 
to send your riding things straight to the Big Sur, 
and whatever else you think you’ll need, and we’ll 
go direct from here, say, Friday—I’d like to get a 
facial and a henna rinse before I go off to the 
wilderness. The doctor said he’d drive in to 
Monterey for us.” 

“Oh, Aunt Fan, you go without me, please! I 
—some way, I’m not in the mood for it.” 

“ ‘Mood for it,’ ” mocked her aunt, severely. 
“Since when have you been having moods, I’d 
like to inquire? You talk like a girl in a senti¬ 
mental novel. No; I won’t stir a step without 
you, Ginger McVeagh, and if you have any grati¬ 
tude, after the way I traipsed across the continent 
with you last year—” then, as her niece looked 
dangerously unmoved, she came closer to her 

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and spoke in a breathless whisper. “Listen, 
Ginger, I haven’t told you the real reason, and I 
didn’t intend to, but you’re so stubborn I see I’ll 
have to.” Aunt Fan had outsizes in speech as 
well as in hose. “The fact is, I’ve made up my 
mind to —make up my mind about the doctor!” 

Ginger frowned. “To make up your mind—I 
don’t understand, Aunt Fan.” 

“Then you’re a ninny-hammer if you don’t,” 
said her aunt, complacently. “You must know— 
every one else in California does—that he’s 
admired me for years—before I married Jim— 
even before I married Henry! I feel this way 
about it; I’m not getting any younger; if ever I’m 
going to—take another step, now’s the time. I 
wouldn’t make a spectacle of myself as I hear Jim 
Featherstone’s doing, but a suitable, dignified—I 
tell you, Ginger,” sudden tears shone in her very 
blue eyes, “there’s nothing funny about the last 
years of your life alone. I shall be all right for 
ten years more, and then—fancywork, chimney 
corners, solitaire!” She began to cry a little. 

Her niece put an arm about her as far as it 
would go. “Oh, don’t cry, Aunt Fan! You’ll 
always have me, you know. We’ll do a lot of 

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things together—travel, spend winters in the 
east—” 

But her aunt shook her head vigorously, pro¬ 
ducing a small, pale pink handkerchief and deli¬ 
cately drying her tears. “It isn’t the same, as 
you’ll know some day. Well, will you or won’t 
you come with me ?” 

“I’ll come with you for a little while, Aunt Fan; 
a week, perhaps.” 

It was true that she owed her plump relative 
something in the way of escort and companionship, 
after her good offices of last winter, but the key¬ 
note of the pilgrimage rather shocked and startled 
her. She thought her aunt must be mistaken; the 
keen, splendid, out-of-doors doctor, and Aunt Fan 
tapping endlessly on high heels down restaurant 
floors—breathing always steam-heated air, know¬ 
ing as little about a horse as a zebra— 

“All right, then—go and telephone old Man- 
uela this minute, and I’ll drop the doctor a line. 
My—when I think what it may mean to me, what 
I may lose—” she went with heavy swiftness, tak¬ 
ing her short, chugging steps, to a tiny pink-and- 
gold writing desk, and it seemed to the watching 

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Ginger that she was considerably keener about 
what she might lose than what she might gain. 

The doctor, brown and hard and happy, met 
their train at Monterey and motored them down 
to his camp. It was in full swing: thirty persons 
sat down to meals together in the big screened 
dining room—pleasant, poised people from San 
Jose and San Francisco, people who had achieved 
and arrived and were comfortably slackening the 
pace—but for the rest of the days and evenings 
they were scattered. The doctor, undisputed 
chief, by right of discovery and conquest of the 
wilderness, captained the hunts, the long rides 
over the mountain trails, the daybreak fishing 
trips; the judge rallied two teams for lusty morn¬ 
ing games of volley ball; an ardent golfer found 
a meadow where enthusiasts might improve their 
form; the women spent long, soft afternoons over 
intricate needlework for an orphans’ home bazaar; 
there were tables of bridges, hammocks and maga¬ 
zines, picnics at the beach, stories by the camp 
fire, dancing in the evening. 

Ginger knew most of the older people, but the 
three or four girls were strangers to her, and it 

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is doubtful if they welcomed her with any deep 
degree of pleasure; everything that they were— 
in riding, in pictorialness, Virginia McVeagh, the 
far-famed “Ginger” of Dos Pozos, was—and 
more. She was the doctor’s prime favorite; his 
keen eyes rested on her in affectionate approval. 
She was quieter than she used to be, he believed, 
but it was a sure and serene quiet, not a shy one. 

They had been discussing a two days’ riding and 
camping trip and a very blond girl leaned for¬ 
ward in her chair at table and called down to 
Ginger. “Listen, Miss McVeagh, I want to give 
you fair warning about the new Forest Ranger! 
I saw him first—I’ve got my fingers crossed!” 
She held up two slim digits, twisted. “Ah . . . 
wait till you see him! Wallie Reed and Tommy 
Meighan and Valentino rolled into one! We’ll 
never be the same again, any of us! Even 
Laura”—Laura, a brown-eyed beauty, was newly 
and patently betrothed—“has missed a mail or 
two! He’s—” 

“Now, now,” said the doctor, rather quickly, 
“he’s a nice, likely lad, but nice, likely lads aren’t 
any treat for Ginger—she has a whole landscape 
full of them, down south. Well, she can judge 

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for herself; she’s going to ride out to Cold Spring 
with me this afternoon, and meet him and get our 
camp-fire permit.” 

“Oh, doctor!” wailed the very blond girl. 
“That’s playing favorites! You know Miss Mc- 
Veagh looks as if she had invented horseback rid¬ 
ing—it gives her a terrible handicap!” 

“Won’t you come, too, Miss Milton?” Ginger 
wanted calmly to know. 

“I should say not! I won’t be a mob scene. 
But it’s not fair. I shall stay in my cabin all 
afternoon and think up ways in which I may out¬ 
shine you.” 

“I’m sure it won’t take you long,” said Ginger, 
amiably. She felt a great deal older than the 
chattering, pretty creature; she felt older and 
wiser than all of them—immeasurably older and 
wiser than the rapt-eyed Laura. 

She was ready at one to ride with the doctor, 
but when she walked down to the corral, her Aunt 
Fan, panting beside her, she found Dr. Mayfield 
putting her saddle on his own horse. 

“Ginger, I’m going to desert you,” he said. “I 
don’t know whether Miss Fanny has confessed 

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to you or not, but she’s inveigled me into a game 
of bridge.” 

“My dear, I simply have to play bridge after 
the lunches I eat here, or I'd take a nap, and that’s 
fatal! I’ve been shamefully deceived about this 
place, anyway—‘camp fare!’ Better food than 
you get at the Ritz, and much more fattening— 
hot biscuits—honey—” 

“But, by way of apology, I’m letting you ride 
Ted,” said the doctor, handsomely. There was 
nothing beyond that in his gift. “You don’t 
mind, do you?” 

“Mind riding Ted?” Ginger smiled at him, 
putting a respectful hand on the big beast’s cheek. 

“Mind going alone, Miss! And you’re to take 
this—” he strapped a belt about her w r aist and 
slipped his pistol into it. 

“Of course I don’t mind going alone, but what 
is this for?” 

“Oh, there have been several mountain lions 
about, recently, and it’s just as well—not that any 
mountain lion living could catch Ted, of course, 
even if it wanted to!” He nodded approvingly 
as she swung herself surely to the tall steed’s back. 
“You remember the way, of course—up the Gov- 

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ernment Trail to ours, where we went yesterday, 
on over the hill, past Post’s old barn—” 

“I know,” said the girl, securely. “How long 
should it take me ?” 

“Well, Ted’s admittedly the fastest walker in 
the state, and part of the time you’ll be able to let 
him out, but it’ll be two hours, each way; you’ll be 
back by five-thirty, I should say, if you don’t 
linger too long at the spring.” 

“I sha’n’t linger,” said Ginger, with dignity. 
“He won’t keep me waiting, I hope. I am just to 
ask him for the camp-fire permits?” She turned 
Ted toward the mountain. 

“Yes, he’ll have them made out, and he’ll be 
on time. Oh, yes—and ask him to come down for 
supper with us, Saturday night, if he can, and 
dance.” 

Ginger nodded and rode away, and the doctor 
and her Aunt Fan stood looking after her. 

“Gad, Miss Fanny,” he said, ruefully, taking 
out his cheerful red camp handkerchief and wiping 
his moist brow, “I wonder what she’ll say to us 
when she comes back?” 

“She’ll say ‘Thank you,’ if she has any grati- 

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tude,” said Mrs. Featherstone, severely. “Now 
I’ll go and get my nap !” 

Ginger had said truly that she did not mind 
riding alone. Much as she liked and looked up to 
the doctor, she was not quite comfortable when 
she was alone with him; she found his keen eyes 
too searching, and she was always a little afraid 
he might say in his brisk fashion, “Now, then, 
Ginger, suppose you tell me all about it!” 

It was a joy to ride Ted, to feel his great bulk 
and power beneath her, like a stout ship, like an 
eight-cylindered machine, and the afternoon was 
clear and jewel-bright. The inevitable after¬ 
luncheon languor left her when she drew rein on 
the first crest; the Ted horse had his second wind 
and they went on with smooth speed. Once, about 
midway of her trip, she figured, the horse stopped 
short, his ears twitching, his delicate nostrils dis¬ 
tending; her heart quickened a beat at what she 
saw before her on the trail; lion’s tracks, positive, 
unmistakable; a big one, clearly. She leaned for¬ 
ward and patted the shining neck. “All right, 
Ted; I see it. Maybe we’ll get him!” 

But the prints of the big pads left the trail 

18 8 



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abruptly and went off into the brush—for a hapless 
fawn, doubtless, and Ginger and the doctor’s horse 
went forward without adventure, until they espied, 
half an hour later, another horseman coming to¬ 
ward them; the Ranger, she thought, had ridden 
on from the spring, and she was sorry; it was, she 
remembered, the clearest and coldest water in all 
those mountains and she was thirsty and warm. 

Immediately, however, she saw that the figure 
was that of a child on a small old horse. He 
kicked the animal into a livelier pace at sight of 
her, and saluted her graciously. “How do you 
do?” he said in a thin and piping voice. “I’m not 
the Ranger. I expect you thought I was, at first, 
didn’t you?—but I’m not. He’s waiting at Cold 
Spring. I’m his Scout, and I rode on alone to 
meet the doctor, because I’m not afraid of any¬ 
thing, hardly, and I ride everywhere alone, almost. 
Where is the doctor?” 

“The doctor didn’t come,” said Ginger, smiling 
at him. She liked boys enormously, and this one 
was engaging. “He sent me instead to get the 
camp-fire permits.” 

“Gee! He let you ride Ted, didn’t he? I guess 
you must be a pretty good rider.” 

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“Pretty good,” admitted Ginger, modestly. 

“I’m a pretty good rider, too, now,” said the 
Scout, frankly. “I guess maybe this horse isn’t 
quite as good as Ted, but he’s a very good horse. 
His name is Mabel. He”—he leaned toward her 
and sunk his treble a tone or two—“he’s a lady 
horse. Well, I guess we'd better be going back 
to Cold Spring.” He turned the lady horse in 
the trail, looking over his shoulder to explain to 
her. “I don’t know if you understand that you 
must always turn your horse with his nose toward 
the canon—then he can see what he’s doing. If 
you turned him the other way, he might back over; 
many a horse and rider’s been lost that way.” 

“I’ll remember that,” said the girl, gravely, 
“and thank you for telling me.” 

“That’s all right,” he said, easily. “I guess 
there’s a good many things I could tell you about 
horses and camping. Of course”—he was pains¬ 
takingly honest about it—“the Ranger taught me. 
I lived in the city, and a person can’t learn much 
there. The Ranger knows —everything ” 

“Does he, really?” 

“You betcher. He can ride like anything and 
he can shoot like—like anything! He was a 

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soldier in the War, and I’ll bet he killed two or 
three hundred Germans himself. But he doesn’t 
like to kill things, the Ranger doesn’t. He won’t 
shoot deer—only rattlesnakes and varmints. But 
he can shoot—oh, boy!” He glanced back at the 
shabby Airedale who was heeling sedately behind 
Mabel. “I guess you didn’t notice my dog. His 
name is Rusty.” 

“Hello, Rusty!” said Ginger, politely. 

“Of course he isn’t really my dog, but I call 
him my dog. He likes me better than he does the 
Ranger, but you ought to see how Snort loves the 
Ranger.” 

“Snort?” she said sharply. “Why—oh, of 
course—this must have been the man the doctor 
wanted him for!” It was strange how the sound 
of that horse’s name, all these miles away, and 
after thirteen months, could make her heart turn 
over. She had been thankful to persuade ’Rome 
Ojeda to let him go because she hadn’t wanted 
ever to see him again; now, it appeared, she must 
see him again. 

“Look!” said the Scout as they rounded a sharp 
curve in the trail. “You can see Cold Spring from 
here and the—” he stopped, catching his breath, 

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pointing. “Looky!” he gasped. “It’s a mountain 
lion, chasing a fawn! Oh, gee . . . gee—” 

Cold Spring was in an elbow of the trail—it 
was like an arm sharply crooked to hold it. Snort, 
his reins over his head, cropped the sparse, green 
grass; the figure of a man lounged at ease. It 
was an entirely peaceful picture. But, just beyond, 
in the opposite direction from that in which the 
girl and the Scout were coming, there was no 
peace, but war; relentless war of extermination by 
the strong upon the weak. A young fawn, breath¬ 
less, almost exhausted, ran stumbling and swaying, 
a pitifully few paces before a lion, long, lithe, 
trotting easily, sure of its prey. 

Ginger, watching from above, saw the scene 
unwinding before her like a film. The horse flung 
up his head and trumpeted wildly and the man, 
catching up the rifle from the ground beside him, 
sprang to his feet. The baby deer saw him; it 
hesitated, staggering, its great eyes wide with 
terror, its mouth open: before it was the trail, and 
the lion gaining steadily, inexorably, and to its 
left, just off the trail— Man —Man with the black 
and shining stick which barked fire and death. 

“Come!” said the man, softly, too low for the 

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girl to hear, but the fawn heard him. “Come! 
Come on!” 

The little creature turned from the trail and 
ran weakly to the Ranger and collapsed in a 
quivering heap at his feet. Instantly, above it, 
his rifle spoke: the lion leaped, twisting, into the 
air and fell to the ground, writhing, uttering a 
wild, unearthly cry. 

“Oh, good work, Ranger!” cried Ginger, half 
sobbing. She spoke to Ted and plunged heedlessly 
over the edge of the bank, cutting down without 
waiting to take the winding trail. She had never 
seen a surer shot; she had never seen grim tragedy 
changed in a flash to peace and security, and no 
scene in a New York play and no passage in a 
symphony had ever moved her more. Her eyes 
were wet and her lips were trembling. “Oh, fine, 
Ranger!” she said, unsteadily. “Good work, 
Ranger!” 

And then Dean Wolcott, turning round from 
his inspection of the fallen lion, faced her. 



CHAPTER XII 


D EAN WOLCOTT had many times—on 
! his solitary rides, in his cabin, after the 
Scout had gone to sleep—rehearsed his 
next meeting with Ginger McVeagh, planned it, 
pictured it, set the stage: never had he dreamed of 
such utterly satisfying scenery, such glorious 
action; riding a gentled Snort after cattle at Dos 
Pozos before the respectful gaze of the girl and 
’Rome Ojeda was a slow and pallid film beside 
this! 

He had wheeled sharply at sound of her voice, 
and now they were looking at each other. His 
face flamed scarlet, but the bright color slowly 
drained out of Ginger’s and left it in golden, 
creamy pallor. They held the pose for a stunned 
instant, the man, rifle in hand, standing over the 
beautiful dead beast, the girl, wet-eyed and breath¬ 
ing fast, erect upon the doctor’s splendid horse. 

“I didn’t know you were ... at the camp.” 
He heard himself speaking. 

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“I didn’t know you were the Ranger,” Ginger 
said, unsteadily. 

It seemed then as if they had said all there was 
to say, and a pause stretched out silently between 
them. It was broken by the Scout who had slipped 
swiftly from the Mabel horse and was kneeling on 
the ground, his ecstatic arms about the fawn. It 
was panting and struggling, its dappled sides heav¬ 
ing painfully in the battle for breath, and its big 
eyes rolled in sick panic. 

“Oh, Ranger, can I keep him? Can I keep 
him and tame him and have him for a pet? Can 
I?” The boy shrilled into their silence. “Oh, 
say, can I? I betcher Aunt Lizzie would let me 
keep a baby deer, maybe! We got a back yard! 
Can I, Ranger?” 

There was rescue and relief in walking over to 
him, in addressing himself wholly to him, his back 
toward the girl. “Well, Scout, you could, of 
course, but I think it would be a pretty mean trick 
to play on him, don’t you?” 

The kindling eagerness in Elmer’s face died 
hard. “But—if I was awful good to him and fed 
him—’n’ everything? And no mountain lions 

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would ever chase him in the city! Oh, Ranger, 
can I?” 

Dean Wolcott thought that perhaps the girl 
would speak—he remembered her hot convictions 
on the subject of captive wild things—but she did 
not; perhaps she was likewise thankful for this 
instant of shelter. 

“You can put your rope around his neck and 
see how he takes it, Scout,” he said. “See if you 
can get him to drink, first of all. He's too weak 
to run away, yet.” Then he turned back to 
Ginger. “Will you dismount?” 

“Thank you, no,” she said. 

Even through the mists of amazement he sensed 
a difference . . . what was it? Intonation? 
Phrasing? It was too tiny a thing to notice, 
really, but hadn’t she always said—“No, thanks” 
—with a certain slouchiness of articulation? He 
could not know that this was one of Mary Wiley’s 
small, smooth habits of speech. 

“Then, may I give you a drink?” He pulled 
out his folding cup. 

“Please! I remember Cold Spring; I’ve been 
remembering it, thirstily, for the last hour.” 

Gravely, he knelt and rinsed his cup and filled 

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it and carried it to her, and gravely she drank, 
and the stillness about them was charged and 
quivering. If they had been alone— But they 
were not alone. The Scout called upon them in a 
thrilled whisper to revel with him in the spectacle 
of the fawn drinking from his cupped hands, and 
again they were grateful to him, thankful for 
him. They watched absorbedly while he got his 
hair rope from the neck of Mabel, the lady horse, 
and put it, shaking with excitement, about the 
slim little throat of the young deer. 

Then Ginger turned her gaze to the mountain 
lion, round which Rusty, the Airedale, was walk¬ 
ing, the hair standing up in a line from the crown 
of his head to the tip of his tail. He was emitting 
low, ferocious growls. “That was a good shot,” 
she said, levelly. 

“Thank you,” said Dean Wolcott, pleasantly. 
“The element of surprise was the only doubt; one 
could hardly miss a target of that size, at that 
distance.” 

Another pause came down out of the blue and 
enveloped them thickly, and again the boy and the 
little wild beast filled up the stage. The fawn 
had staggered to its feet at the feel of the rope 

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and now, refreshed by the water, by the minutes 
of rest, it began to battle this fresh terror. 

“Careful, Scout! If he gets away from you 
with that rope he’ll be out of luck; he’ll hang 
himself in the brush within an hour!” Dean’s 
voice was sharp. 

“Oh, gee—will he? Oh, golly! Gee! Then 
—then help me to let him loose!” 

“I’ll help you!” Ginger was out of the saddle, 
down beside him, her arms about the madly strug¬ 
gling body. It had been more than she could bear, 
Dean Wolcott had calculated surely. “I’ll hold 
him. Get your rope off. And boy, Scout”—she 
looked at him earnestly across the head of the 
fawn, just as he slipped the hair rope clumsily off 
—“never keep anything—tied or in a cage! Never 
keep anything—that—that doesn’t want to stay!” 

“I guess I won’t,” said Elmer Bunty, soberly. 
“I thought I could take awful good care of him, 
but— Look! Looky!” 

The baby deer was trotting unsteadily back in 
the direction from which he had come, making all 
the speed his weakness and weariness would allow, 
but at the bend in the trail he paused and looked 

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back over his shoulder; he stood there, looking 
back at them for a long instant. 

“He’s thanking you,” said Ginger, gently. 
“He’s thanking you— both” 

Now the boy was free to give his undivided 
attention to the dead lion, and he joined the 
Airedale in his sentry go, and now Ginger was 
aware of being off her horse, aware that she was 
—good heavens, what had the doctor said about 
“not lingering”? He had known, of course, and 
planned it all, and Aunt Fan had known—and 
perhaps the very blond girl had known, and the 
whole camp—the whole gay, jovial, joking camp 
had known. . . . She blushed, swiftly and scorch- 
ingly, and sprang into her saddle. 

“I must go,” she said, curtly. “It’s a good two 
hours—” 

She gave Ted his head, and he sprang forward 
on the trail. She could not even say good-by. 

“Oh—wait!” Dean Wolcott called after her, 
but she pretended not to hear. She was in a hot 
fury; she had been tricked and fooled; this was 
why Aunt Fan had brought her down here; they 
were all waiting for her now at camp, talking 
her over, laughing, conjecturing. “Ted!” She 

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flecked the shining flank with her ramal (sacrilege, 
this!) and they sped fleetly up the trail. She 
heard him following her; Ted heard, too, and 
laid back his ears; there would be no passing him 
on the trail—no catching up with him. 

She could not forbear a look behind; she must 
see him on Snort; it was not enough to hear the 
thundering hoofs, to imagine him. The instant 
she turned her head he waved his hand with some¬ 
thing—a paper—a card in it. 

“Your—permits!” he called. “The doctor’s 
camp-fire permits.” 

Then she must wait, pulling in the mettlesome 
Ted, furious at herself for forgetting, for betray¬ 
ing her confused bewilderment. The crisping 
color stayed in her face, but she had a cool hold 
on her voice. “Thank you—I’m sorry. Seeing 
the lion, and the fawn—it went out of my mind—” 

“Naturally,” said the Ranger, gravely. He 
handed her the permits, and he did it slowly, filling 
up his eyes with the sight of her. It was he who 
wore the corduroy now; Ginger was in creamy 
linen, smartly cut, with a scarlet band on her linen 
hat and a soft scarlet tie under the rolling collar 
of her sport shirt; she was more radiant, more 


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glowing, more breath-takingly lovely, even, than 
he had remembered, and he had remembered a 
great deal. 

Then, just to make entirely clear the fact that 
she was wholly at her ease, that there were, for 
her, at least, no stinging memories, the girl said 
pleasantly—“Snort is in fine condition, isn’t he?” 

And the man, quite as coolly, made answer, 
“Yes; he’s a great horse—I’ve enjoyed him.” 
Then, as if to paraphrase ’Rome Ojeda’s drawling 
words on that gray and baleful morning of the 
cattle drive, he added, slowly, “But I’m thinking 
of changing his name. You see ... he doesn’t 
. . . anymore!” 

It was her turn, now, during his leisurely sen¬ 
tence, to snatch a fuller look at him, to sense the 
breadth and vigor, the brown and vehement power 
of him; he looked older, in the way of poise and 
serenity, yet more boyish—younger, winningly 
young, and it seemed as she looked at him, meet¬ 
ing the eagerness leashed in his eyes, as if some 
force beyond their stiff young wills must pull them 
down off their horses and push them back into 
each other’s arms. 

She did not answer what he had said about 


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Snort, but she was not aware that she had not 
done so, for she had paid full and instant tribute 
in her own mind, and she knew that she must go 
now if she meant to go at all. She nodded, and 
spoke to Ted, and he sprang forward, but before 
he had gone a dozen lengths she had to halt again; 
she could have wept with rage at herself, but it 
would be intolerable to go back to camp and 
confess to a forgotten message. 

She called after him, not “Dean,” not the ridicu¬ 
lous “Mr. Wolcott,” just a hail; but it stopped 
him instantly. “The doctor”—he could feel the 
emphasis she put on the two words—it seemed to 
make the doctor stand out, unique in his strange 
desire —“the doctor hopes you will come to supper 
at the camp Saturday night, and stay to dance.” 

He asked her to thank the doctor and to say 
that he would try to come. Then they went 
steadily on in their opposite ways and neither one 
of them looked back again, and Ginger had almost 
two hours (Ted made even better speed on the 
home trail) in which to get herself thoroughly in 
hand before she met the campers. It suited her 
to find them all assembled at the “Civic Center” 
as they called the cleared space about the camp 


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fire. The mail had just been brought over from 
Pfeiffer’s, and they had all had their tingling cold 
showers and made their bluff, informal toilets for 
dinner, and there was a chattering over letters and 
magazines which ceased instantly as Ginger rode 
up. She might be imagining a sort of electric 
quiet on the part of the whole group, she told 
herself, but she was not imagining anything about 
the doctor and her Aunt Fan. 

The doctor paused in the middle of his gesture 
in handing a plump letter to the betrothed girl, 
and his eyes twinkled uncontrollably, and Mrs. 
Featherstone put her pink sport handkerchief to 
her lips. “Well,” said Dr. Mayfield, genially, 
“did you meet the Ranger? And did you get our 
permits?” 

“Yes,” said Ginger. “I met the Ranger at Cold 
Spring, and here are your permits.” She leaned 
from the saddle to hand them to him. Then, 
addressing herself to the others, smiling a little 
at the very blond girl who was holding up two 
crossed fingers for her attention—“And it was a 
very nice surprise! I find your Ranger is an old 
friend. Yes; he was Aleck’s best friend—over 
there. He was with him—on the last day.” (Let 

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them laugh now, if they could! But they didn’t 
laugh; they smiled at her and murmured kind 
little fragments of sentences, and she went on.) 
“And he made Aunt Fan and me a visit at Dos 
Pozos last summer. You’ll be glad to see how 
husky he’s grown in this work, Aunt Fan!” Mary 
Wiley could not have done it more handily, with 
nicer values. “And it was very thrilling—I saw 
him shoot a mountain lion! I’ll tell you all about 
it at supper, but I must fly now, if I’m to have my 
shower!” 

She delivered Ted over to his master with a 
warm word of homage, and ran to her cabin and 
went into it and locked both doors. She didn’t 
want her Aunt Fan’s prominent blue eyes. Swiftly, 
an eye on the little traveling clock in its case of 
scarlet leather, she pulled off her clothes and 
jumped under the shower, and her slim brown 
body was shivering before the nipping water 
touched it. 



CHAPTER XIII 


AT supper time she told them, graphically, 
/-\ and with full and generous credit to the 
-A* Ranger, about the mountain lion and the 
fawn, and was entirely amiable about repeating in 
detail to any one who wished to hear more. 

She said to the doctor, while they were at table, 
lifting her voice a little over the neighboring talk, 
that she was delighted to see Dean Wolcott so 
robust. This life must agree tremendously with 
him. How long—she was brightly, coolly inter¬ 
ested—had he been in the west? 

“Well, he’s been west of Boston for almost a 
year, I should say, what with his work at the 
School of Forestry, and riding in Wyoming, and 
all, and he’s been here in the Big Sur since early in 
June.” 

The doctor was a little puzzled; he did not 
quite understand and he did not at all like this 
hard serenity; she had not the look of a girl 
reunited to her lover, he told himself rather 

205 


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anxiously. Later on, when they were settling to 
bridge, he managed a worried word aside to Mrs. 
Featherstone. 

“I wonder, Miss Fanny, if we bungled it?” 

“Certainly not,” said Ginger’s Aunt Fan, com¬ 
fortably. “She’ll have to stand off and act like 
her great-grandmother Valdes for awhile, of 
course—that’s part of the picture, but I’m not 
worrying—not about them, at least!” She reached 
a plump hand into a candy box on the next table. 
“Doctor, can’t you make it a camp misdemeanor 
for those girls to leave this stuff around?—Choco¬ 
late creams the size of young sofa cushions—” 

And when she and her niece had gone to their 
joint cabin, three hours later, and the girl main¬ 
tained her cool serenity, she rode blithely over it. 

“All right, my dear! Keep it up! I glory in 
your spunk. But don’t you ever think you’re 
putting anything over on your Aunt Frances 
May!” 

Dean Wolcott came to supper on Saturday 
night. The doctor said he was sorry he had not 
thought to include the little Scout, but the Ranger 
shook his head. “No, I’ve parked him at the 

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cottage with Rusty, the Airedale, inside and the 
Mabel horse saddled and ready in case he has to 
do a hasty Paul Revere to get me. He’s reading 
Pontiac, Chief of the Ottawas, and listening for 
the telephone, and reflecting, chestily, that Edna 
couldn’t call him a ’Fraid-Cat if she saw him now. 
Edna is a slightly older cousin who has been a 
great help to her mother in making life miserable 
for him.” 

“I’m simply mad about him,” the very blond 
girl whispered to Ginger. She was wearing a 
baby blue organdie and looked like the fairest of 
all the very young angels, and she had a slight 
lisp which one felt she had not made very stern 
efforts to eradicate. “I adore the way he talks, 
and the things he says—and that golden, patent- 
leather effect of hair—oh, and the way he carries 
himself, and everything!” 

“Aside from that, you don’t admire him espe¬ 
cially, I gather,” said Ginger, smiling carefully at 
her. She felt like a swarthy gypsy beside her, and 
crudely strong and weathered. 

Dean asked the very blond girl for the first 
dance, and Ginger for the second, and the 
betrothed girl with the dreaming eyes for the 

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third, and he did not dance with Ginger again 
after that, but divided himself among the rest, 
with two or three extras with the pale blue organ¬ 
die. Ginger knew and was sure that he knew that 
the doctor and her aunt and some of the others 
were watching them keenly, and she held her 
Scotch chin at a firm angle, and her Spanish mouth 
did not look in the least as it had that day upon 
Aleck’s bridge. She asked him if he had been 
able to save the skin of the mountain lion and was 
cordially pleased to hear that it was in excellent 
shape, and had been sent into San Jose to be 
mounted. Dean inquired for her henchmen at 
Dos Pozos with especial emphasis on Estrada, to 
whom he sent his remembrances. 

If the contact set their hearts to galloping as 
Snort had done in the historic runaway, there was 
no visible evidence of it. They danced beautifully 
together, and Dean applauded enthusiastically for 
an encore, and they finished it out, and then he 
relinquished her to a gray-haired, black-eyed gal¬ 
lant whose heels had remained as light as his 
heart, and sat chatting pleasantly with Mrs. 
Featherstone. Almost at once he was aware that 
she and her niece had spent the greater portion of 

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the winter in the far east, and when he went away 
to dance again he said bitterly to himself: 

“Well, that does settle it. Months in the east, 
and never a sign, never a word—” and he asked 
the Fra Angelico angel in the blue organdie to 
walk down to the creek in the moonlight after 
their next fox trot together. 

And Ginger, for her part, had told herself a 
hundred times, “He has been here since early in 
June; he has never let me know; it is simply over, 
that’s all; finished between us,” and she wondered 
just how soon she could reasonably and with 
dignity persuade Aunt Fan to go back to town. 

Before the Ranger left that evening the doctor 
had persuaded him to go with them on a riding 
trip, or rather, to let them time their excursion 
with his regular ride to Slate’s Springs. The 
very blond girl was to go; she had had a riding 
suit made by the smartest tailor in San Francisco 
for just such an occasion as this, and—last and 
greatest wonder of the world—Mrs. Featherstone 
was to go. The doctor had told her seriously 
that the heroism of her diet must be supplemented 
by exercise if she meant to melt her too too solid 
flesh—strenuous exercise, not chugging down to 

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the camp gate in her high heels and short vamps 
after supper—and she had dared two or three 
very brief equestrian outings on old Sam. 

Ginger was amazed. “I think it’s sporting of 
you, Aunt Fan, but I don’t think you realize how 
hard it’s going to be—and the doctor doesn’t 
realize how soft you are! You keep telling that 
you lead an active life, and he believes you, but if 
he knew that you think it’s activity to walk from 
the St. Agnes to the Palace Hotel for lunch—” 
“Now, don’t be a crape hanger, my child,” said 
her aunt, severely. “Just because you’re out of 
sorts yourself—honestly, Ginger, the way you let 
Dean Wolcott be gobbled up alive by that little, 
pale blue string bean—” 

Ginger was brushing her mane of black hair, 
and it hung over her head and down before her 
face in a thick curtain. Her voice came through 
it, muffled but wholly amiable, “He seems to be 
enjoying it, doesn’t he?” 

“Seems, of course! That’s just it. Any man 
with the spirit of a caterpillar— Do you expect 
him to sit in a corner and twiddle his thumbs 
until—” 

“I expect him to do just as he’s doing,” said 


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her niece, pleasantly. She was giving her hair, 
it appeared, an especially thorough brushing. 

“Ginger,” said Mrs. Featherstone, sniffing, 
“Ginger! I guess we’ll have to get another nick¬ 
name for you. Very weak Lemon Extract . . . 
Vanilla. ...” 

The girl flung up her head and the black mane 
swung back over her shoulders, thick and shining. 
Her face was a little flushed. “I’m worrying 
about your riding to Slate’s, Aunt Fan. I’m posi¬ 
tive it will be too much for you.” 

“Well, I don’t say I’ll enjoy it,” Mrs. Feather- 
stone conceded. “That isn’t the idea; I shall take 
it as I would take a dose of medicine.” 

“But you can’t swallow it down with one brave 
gulp, Aunt Fan! You haven’t any idea what it 
will be like, hours and hours—and hours! Three 
days in the saddle, and one of the nights you’ll 
camp out and sleep on the ground—” 

“I’m not going to sleep on the ground; the 
doctor’s loaning me his pneumatic-cushioned sleep¬ 
ing bag!” Then, as Ginger still shook her head, 
“I’ll tell you, dearie, it’s this way. I haven’t 
quite made up my mind about the doctor yet, but 
I’m making it up, and if I do—well, I must learn 


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to like the sort of things he likes, mustn't I?” 
She finished very sweetly, with a great deal of 
wistful earnestness in her blue eyes. 

“Well, I wish I could follow you with an ambu¬ 
lance, that’s all,” said her niece, darkly. 

The doctor was much surprised and a little 
hurt to find that Ginger was going to stay in camp 
and not make the ride with them, but she was 
very logical about it. She knew his well-known 
preference for taking only a small party; more 
than six made a cumbersome excursion, he held— 
they were only as fast as the slowest horse in the 
string, and there was constant dismounting for 
cinching and saddle-setting, and endless delays; 
there would be seven in this party without her. 
She pointed out, gently, that riding wasn’t after 
all such a treat, such a new experience to her as 
it was to Aunt Fan, and the very blond girl. 

They got off at nine on a blue-and-gold morning 
and Ginger was very helpful and attentive to her 
aunt, who was large and impressive upon old Sam 
in her borrowed riding things. Some one among 
the women had produced an old-fashioned divided 
skirt of corduroy and her legs were wound with 



CORDUROY 


spiral puttees of khaki. She was not ill-pleased 
with herself. “Of course, I’m stout,” she whis¬ 
pered to Ginger, “but I do taper. I have the 
wrists and ankles of a woman half my weight. 
This isn’t a very snappy outfit, is it? But who 
knows—if I keep up this sort of thing, by next 
summer I may be able to ride in pants and get 
away with it!” 

The doctor rode up to them. “Won’t change 
your mind, Ginger, even if I let you ride Ted?” 

“Thank you, no, Doctor. I’m going to be a 
magazine and hammock person.” She held, in¬ 
deed, a magazine, one of the sober and substantial 
ones. She waved them out of sight and then 
found a hammock in the sun and devoted herself 
to a rather stiff article on California’s attitude 
toward the Japanese problem, and at luncheon 
she was very gay with every one, and let the black- 
eyed gallant (who was just a little flattered at her 
staying behind) take her down to his improvised 
golf course and instruct her in driving off, which 
involved a good deal of minute demonstration as 
to the position of her hands on the club. 

Later in the afternoon she saddled a horse and 
rode over the hills to the ocean and visited the 

213 



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valiant little old grandmother of most of the 
families in the vicinity. She had come from Alsace 
when she was a child, and she had crossed the 
plains in a prairie schooner when she was a very 
young girl, and married and settled in that remote 
and difficult spot. She had borne and reared nine 
children and buried four of them, and she had 
been a widow for long years. Ginger had come 
to see her on her last visit to the camp, and the 
old lady remembered her perfectly and thought 
she was even prettier than she had given promise 
of being, but she was a little worried to find she 
was not married, at twenty-three, and had no 
prospects. Twenty-three was high time, “Gram¬ 
ma” considered, to be about the real business of 
life. Clearly sorry for her, she made haste to 
show her all her treasures—the many patchwork 
quilts which she made in the wet winters when she 
couldn’t work out of doors, slowly, because she 
had two paralyzed fingers and the rest somewhat 
warped with work and rheumatism, the quaint, 
water-colored picture which symbolized her 
father’s honorable discharge from the French 
army, the curios her most venturesome son had 
brought back from Alaska, her clock. This was 

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a massive affair of onyx, elaborately embellished, 
and there was a plate upon its front with an in¬ 
scription. The old lady had risen, one night of 
wild and violent wind and rain, impelled by she 
knew not what impulse, and placed a lighted lamp 
in her upper window, and hours later the ship¬ 
wrecked crew of a coast steamer had groped to 
her door. “Gramma” had warmed and dried 
and fed them and put them to bed, and after 
their sojourn with her they had sent the clock 
from San Francisco, inscribed with their names 
and her name and the date. 

“The boys fetched it down in the hay wagon, 
dearie, and it’s never run,” she said regretfully, 
looking up at its silent and impassive countenance 
—it was stating, mendaciously, in late afternoon, 
that it was only ten o’clock—but clearly she bore 
it no grudge; it was almost too much, she seemed 
to feel, to expect a clock as handsome as that 
to keep time; the kitchen clock could do that: 
this one was dedicated to being a thing of beauty, 
and therefore a joy forever. 

Ginger, looking down at the dauntless small 
figure, the work-warped hands and the uncon¬ 
quered brightness of the eyes, put an arm about 

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her suddenly and gave her a little hug. If the 
very blond girl and the betrothed girl made her 
feel old and wise, “Gramma” made her feel her 
untried youth. She had crossed an ocean and a 
continent, and helped to hew a home out of a 
stubborn wilderness; she had borne and reared 
and buried—there was a little graveyard on the 
high hill above the ranch—done a woman’s work 
and a man’s work: three wars had roared and 
flamed and guttered out again in her ken; the 
world had leaped forward in science and inven¬ 
tion, but she had lived on in her quiet corner, 
and she seemed as old and as wise as the hills, 
and as glad as the morning. 

She pulled Ginger down and kissed her warm 
cheek. “You hurry up, dearie,” she said, ur¬ 
gently. “You hurry up! And I’ll give you a quilt 
—that’s what I’ll do! A basket pattern, or a 
log cabin, or a rising sun—you can take your 
choice!” She stood nodding and beaming like 
an ancient seeress at the door of her cave. “You 
hurry up! You’re young, dearie, but time goes 
fast—spring and summer, and then the fall comes 
and the winter —you hurry!” 



CHAPTER XIV 


T HEY had expected the riding party back 
for luncheon on Saturday, but they did 
not come, and Ginger was unhappily 
sure that it was her Aunt Fan who was retarding 
the procession. Some one raised a shout at six 
o’clock that they were on the trail above the 
camp; ordinarily, they would arrive in ten minutes, 
but it was half an hour before they wound down 
beside the creek and through the rustic gate. The 
doctor rode first. 

“A fine trip,” he said stoutly. “Yes, it was a 
remarkably fine trip, but Miss Fanny is pretty 
tired; it was just a little too much of an under¬ 
taking for her, I’m afraid.” 

“Just a little,” said Mrs. Featherstone, bitterly. 
She was bracing herself in the saddle with both 
hands on the pommel, and her feet were out of the 
stirrups, dangling. Her hat was pulled far for¬ 
ward and wisps of damp hair adhered pastily to 
her face, and she was grimed with dust. 

“I’d ride right up to my cabin, if I were you, 

217 


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Miss Fanny,” said the doctor, his kind eyes 
solicitous. 

“Yes,” said Ginger’s Aunt Fan through set 
teeth, “I shouldn’t like to miss anything.” 

Ginger, running beside old Sam, thought that 
he looked haggard and sagged a little at the 
knees. One of the boys followed them, and with 
his help she got her aunt to the ground. Mrs. 
Featherstone did not speak until the boy had 
led the horse away to the corral, and then, leaning 
heavily on her niece’s shoulder and breathing 
hard, she hissed, “If you tell me that you ‘told 
me so’ I’ll kill you; I’ll kill you with my bare 
hands.” 

Ginger bent her head and bit her lips. “Let’s 
get into the cabin, Aunt Fan.” She was very 
gentle about helping her. “Now, I’ll get those 
puttees and shoes off, the first thing! You sit 
right down—” 

“Sit down?” said her aunt, with bitter fury. 
“Sit down? I never expect to sit down again. 
If you can get my clothes off me standing up, all 
right. Otherwise, they stay on.” She braced 
herself against the wall and looked truculently 
down at the kneeling girl. 

218 



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“Wait a minute,” said Ginger. “Aunt Fan, if 
you could walk up to the bathhouse and get a hot 
tub—” 

“Walk?” said Mrs. Featherstone. “ Walk?” 
She looked as if she would enjoy doing her young 
kinswoman an injury. “I guess you’d better leave 
everything on; if you can lash me to the wall, 
some way, I dare say I can sleep standing up; 
they say the men often did, in the War.” 

“Oh, do let me get your things off,” Ginger 
pleaded. “You don’t know how much better 
you’ll feel!” 

“No, I don’t,” said her aunt, grimly. She 
shut her eyes and maintained a brooding silence 
while her niece dragged off her puttees and shoes 
and stockings and got her hot and swollen feet 
into soft knitted slippers. “I can give you a 
foot bath, one foot at a time, Aunt Fan,” she 
said, soothingly. “Don’t you worry—I can 
manage nicely!” She set a basin of water to heat¬ 
ing over an alcohol stove and ran back to divest 
her of her other clothing, and to cold cream the 
dust from her burning face; sometimes she had to 
rush into the tiny dressing room and fight down 
a positive hysteria of mirth, but at last she had 

219- 



CORDUROY 


the large lady cleansed and in her nightdress and 
kimono. “And now, if you’ll get into bed, Aunt 
Fan, I’ll bring your supper!” she said, cheerfully. 

“I shan’t move,” said the sufferer, firmly. 
“You can bring me food—” 

“Yes—a little soup, and some hot tea—” said 
Ginger. 

“Food,” said her aunt, with sudden vigor. 
“Added to everything else, I’m half starved. 
Bring—everything you find.” 

She was still standing, braced against the wall, 
when the girl came back with a laden tray, and 
Ginger put it on the waist-high shelf which served 
for a dressing table and she was able to manage 
very nicely. Nourishment seemed to unseal Aunt 
Fan’s lips. “I’ve made up my mind about the 
doctor,” she said, darkly. “My Lord —that man 
isn’t a suitor; he’s a mule driver! It wasn’t so 
bad the first hour, and even the second hour I 
could stand it by thinking about other things, but 
we rode until one before we stopped for lunch, 
and then I had to get off . . . and to get on 
again . . . and then we rode until six, and had 
supper and went to bed—to bed!” She groaned 
aloud, pausing with a bit of buttered biscuit half- 


220 



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way to her mouth. “He picked out the steepest 
hillside in the entire Santa Lucia Range, and the 
one with the most rocks on it . . . all those rocks 
couldn’t have been born on it; he must have 
lugged some of them there! Then he blew up 
that sleeping bag; sleeping bag! I’d like to know 
the village wag that invented it. It was like trying 
to rest on a school of hot-water bags; first I 
rolled off one side of it and then off the other, 
and then it slid down the grade—it was as slip¬ 
pery as if it had been buttered! It slid down 
five times and I guess I’d have gone straight down 
to the ocean and I wouldn’t have cared much, 
either, if the doctor hadn’t caught me as I went 
past, every time; he was ’way below that girl and 
me. Finally, he tied it to a tree. ... I never 
closed my eyes all night, and that Dr. Rawdon 
never closed his mouth all night. I give you 
my word it sounded as if he was doing it on 
purpose; I should think his wife would poison 
him. And when I dozed off at four o’clock—I 
was so weak and exhausted I just lost myself 
for a moment—the doctor began calling people 
to get up I Ginger, I swear to you, if I’d had 
a weapon within reach I’d have murdered him. 


221 



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That’s all he’s done on this trip—call people to 
get up—up in the morning, up from a nap, up on 
the horses again. If he ever gets to Heaven 
they’ll retire Gabriel on pension and give him 
the trump!” She stopped, gasping a little, and 
ate earnestly for a moment. “Can you imagine 
me, making my toilet at quarter after four in 
the morning on a glassy hillside, Ginger Me- 
Veagh? I’d lost most of my hairpins and my 
lip stick and my powder in those slides, and I 
had to borrow from that canary-headed paper 
doll that’s vamping Dean Wolcott till he doesn’t 
know whether he’s afoot or horseback. The 
doctor started us off again before it was light, 
and we rode and we rode and we rode—” 

“I know, Aunt Fan. I know,” said Ginger, 
soothingly. “Now if you’ll just get to bed—” 
“Will you wait till I finish my supper? I tell 
you I’m weak for the want of food. And when 
we got to Slate's, late yesterday afternoon, the 
doctor said I must take the hot sulphur bath or 
whatever it is, and I thought I would; I might be 
finished with him as a friend, but I could still take 
his advice as a physician. Well . . 

“I know what it’s like, Aunt Fan; I’ve been 


222 



CORDUROY 


there, you know,” said Ginger, turning back the 
covers of the bed. 

But nothing could stem the tide of her mon¬ 
ologue. “It’s about seven miles from the house, 
to begin with—” 

“Oh, Aunt Fan—half a mile!” 

“—seven miles down a horrible trail above 
the ocean, and that paper doll went with me, 
and there was no bathhouse; there was no bath¬ 
house but a flag; you put the flag up or down 
at the top of the trail and that shows whether 
there’s anybody bathing, and if you’ve got the 
signal right, perhaps nobody comes down. . . . 
There were simply two tubs right out in the 

landscape; it’s the most indecent thing I ever-” 

“But, Aunt Fan, it’s under the side of the hill; 
no one could possibly see you, and the flag 
was-” 

“What about the ocean?” her aunt wanted 
indignantly to know. “What about the Pacific 
Ocean? A steamer and a tug and two fishing 
boats went by; I felt like a mermaid without even 
the privacy of a tail. But I didn’t mind the 
ocean and the boats as much as I did that girl; 


223 





CORDUROY 


I detested her the first minute I laid eyes on her, 
and now she’s my most intimate friend!” 

“Aunt Fan, you must try to rest! Just try 
lying down and see if you don’t—” 

“I suppose I can lie on my face,” said Mrs. 
Featherstone, staggering weakly to the bed. “I 
shall faint away and die if I don’t get off my feet; 
they’ve ulcerated.” She eased herself with sharp 
groans, to a kneeling posture upon the bed. “I 
wish you could have heard the way the doctor 
spoke to me, coming down that ghastly trail, 

just above camp. The way he-” 

“Now, Aunt Fan,” said Ginger, loyally, “the 
doctor may have been a little impatient, and no 

doubt he was anxious about you, but-” 

“That’s right,” said her aunt, heavily. “Turn 
against your own! It was a hideously dangerous 
piece of trail, and I said I was going to get off 
and walk—I was being shaken right up between 
the horse’s ears—and I wish you could have 
heard the tone in which he told me to stay on. 
I give you my sacred word of honor, no man has 
ever spoken to me in a tone like that—not even 
Jim Featherstone at his worst, and as for Henry 
—Henry would have died before— Well, I’ve 

224 





CORDUROY 


made up my mind, all right. Dr. Gurney May- 
field could never make a woman happy; I sup¬ 
pose he might make her healthy, if he got her 
young enough, but not’’—she stopped suddenly 
—“where are you going ?” 

“I thought I’d go up to the Lodge for a few 
minutes, Aunt Fan, after I take this tray back,” 
said Ginger. “I think you'll relax and rest if you 
are quiet.” 

“Oh, very well,” said Mrs. Featherstone, let¬ 
ting herself down, inch by inch, “go on and leave 
me! I came here for you, and suffered and en¬ 
dured all of this for you, but never mind that. 
Go on and dance! Dance!” She writhed at the 
thought. “But I suppose it would be easier”— 
the words came muffled from the pillow—“for 
me to dance a dance than to —sit it out. . . .” 

Ginger put the tray down again and ran to 
draw the covers up over the plump shoulders. 
“I’ll come back very soon, Aunt Fan, and please 
try to sleep!” 

“Sleep!” said her aunt, sniffing angrily and bur¬ 
rowing into the feathery depths. “I’ll probably 
smother, but I guess there won’t be much mourn¬ 
ing,” and just as Ginger stepped outside she heard 

225 



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her murmuring—“suppose I'll have to sleep this 
way for a month . . . thank the Lord I didn’t 
waste a fortune getting my face lifted—a lot of 
good it’d do now! I should have had my head 
examined instead!” 

Ginger carried the tray to the kitchen and 
the kind little waitress said she was glad to see 
the poor lady’d kept her appetite, and then she 
walked out into the soft dusk and stood looking 
about the doctor’s beloved camp. It was not quite 
dark, but the circling hills were closing in, somber 
in silhouette, and the stars were very remote and 
cold and bright; the tall redwoods seemed to 
stand guard over the little cuddling cabins, and 
the trim little paths showed up whitely against 
the darker earth surrounding them. It was a 
night of brisk weather and there was no camp 
fire; they were all gathered in the Lodge, and 
there were leaping flames on the hearth and a 
teasing tune going on the phonograph, and the 
sound of rhythmic feet. Ginger stood irresolute; 
she hadn’t thought she wanted the Lodge’s robust 
gayety to-night, but she didn’t want to go back to 
the cabin until her poor aunt had fallen asleep. 

226 



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While she was hesitating the doctor came to the 
door and called her in. 

“I’m might sorry about Miss Fanny,” he said 
remorsefully. “There won’t be any serious con¬ 
sequences, of course, but I see now—as I should 
have seen before—that she wasn’t equal to it.” 
He sighed a little. “I expect my enthusiasm 
carries me away, sometimes.” 

Ginger wondered if the doctor, too, had been 
making up his mind to make up his mind—and 
had made it up. He was looking rather pensive, 
and a good deal relieved. 

The Lodge, save where the bridge players sat, 
was only dimly lighted by Chinese lanterns and 
it was several minutes before Ginger saw that 
Dean Wolcott was among the slow-moving 
dancers. The doctor went back to the card table 
and she sat down in a dusky corner and hoped 
no one would see her and ask her to dance. They 
were all very gay to-night; the whole camp seemed 
vibrating with the laughing, lazy tune the machine 
was grinding out; she decided to take her Aunt 
Fan back to San Francisco as soon as she could 
stand the trip, and to go home to Dos Pozos. 

227 



CORDUROY 


She wanted work. And in December she would 
go on to visit Mary Wiley. 

The dance was finished and another one started, 
and Dean Wolcott bent over her, suddenly. 
“Will you dance with me, Ginger?” 

“I don't think—I shall have to go back to 
Aunt Fan—” she began uncertainly. 

“Please,” he said, very low, and she got to 
her feet. The music was a slow, throbbing thing, 
built on an old slave melody; there was longing 
in it, and recklessness, and a little recurrent strain 
of poignant pathos. They danced twice the 
length of the Lodge without speaking. Then, 
without warning, when they were near the door, 
his arms tightened about her. “Come out,” he 
said, imperatively. “Come down to the creek; 
I must talk to you. Will you come, Ginger ? You 
must come.” Still dancing, her feet were guided 
almost over the threshold, and Dean thrust out 
his arm to open the screen door. 

But he stood still, staring, and his other arm 
fell away from her, for a horseman was gallop¬ 
ing furiously up the inviolate Main Street of the 
tidy camp. “It’s the Scout!” 

“Fire!” shouted Elmer Bunty, loping the 

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Mabel horse to the very door of the Lodge and 
making a spectacular stop. “Forest fire, Ranger I” 

“Where ?” 

Some one had turned off the phonograph and 
the dancers were crowding out and the card 
players were pushing back their chairs. 

“Lost Valley, coming this way with a high 
wind and coming fast!” This was the moment 
Elmer Bunty had been living for; there were 
thirty people looking at him and listening to him 
now, and Ginger saw with a little clutch at her 
heart that Dean Wolcott was not unmindful 
of it. 

“Good work, Scout!” he said roundly. “Doc¬ 
tor, my Scout brings big news and bad news— 
fire in Lost Valley, coming this way with a high 
wind.” It was the new Ranger’s first fire, every 
one knew. 

“And coming fast!” said Elmer Bunty, im¬ 
portantly. 

Gayety fell from the camp, slipping from its 
shoulders like a bright cape. The doctor, veteran 
fire fighter himself, mobilized his forces to join 
the regulars of the vicinity—seasoned soldiers 

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at Pfeiffer’s, at Post’s; it was said that Mateo 
Golinda moved on the creeping flames like a 
wave rolling up from the sea. The women put 
away their pretty needlework and made stacks 
of hearty sandwiches and gallons of coffee, and 
the boys and Ginger rode up to the first fire 
line and carried them to the men. 

Ginger’s Aunt Fan thought the most sensible 
thing for them to do was to take the stage back 
to Monterey—agony as the trip would be for 
her—but she found her niece adamant. “I can 
help the doctor,” she said. “I’m not going to 
leave, Aunt Fan.” 

She knew that the doctor had a double anxiety; 
beside and beyond the red terror that menaced his 
camp and the country he loved, there was his 
concern for Dean Wolcott. Fie had stood spon¬ 
sor for him to these people, persuading their 
own tried Ranger to go away on leave and give 
his friend a chance, and now they were waiting 
and watching to see him make good. 

“Doctor,” said Ginger to him on the third 
day, riding up to meet him with supplies, “I 
wish you would let me help you! I know how 

230 



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—I’ve fought fire at home a dozen times with 
Aleck and Estrada.” 

“You are helping me, Ginger, bringing up 
our food, looking after things at camp— It’s 
a great comfort for me to know that you are in 
charge there.” 

“But I’m not really needed there, doctor. In 
case of danger they could all walk over to Pfeif¬ 
fer’s—even Aunt Fan”—she smiled a little—“and 
be taken in to Monterey. And I am needed 
here; you’re terribly short-handed.” 

“I know we are, just now, Ginger, but Dean 
has telephoned in to King City to the Chief; 
he’ll be coming in to-morrow himself, with 
twenty men, bringing their own supplies.” 

“Yes, but to-day, and to-night?” 

“We’ll manage; we’ll manage.” His eyes were 
bloodshot and his face was lined with weariness 
and grimed with smoke, but he pulsed with en¬ 
ergy. He was dedicating himself gladly to the 
wild land which had been, quite literally, his re¬ 
creation; it had given him endless joy and con¬ 
tent, and now he was fighting in its service. 

“Please let me stay?” Ginger put a hand on 
his arm. “I thought you might; that’s why I 

231 




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came alone to-day, without the boys, and I left 
word for them not to be anxious at camp if I 
didn’t come back—that I’d be with you.” 

He shook his head. “I couldn’t think of it, 
Ginger. Miss Fanny would never forgive me; 
I expect she never will, as it is! No, you must 
go back to camp.” 

Ginger swung into the saddle. She flushed, but 
her gaze was very steady. “Doctor, how is Dean 
doing? Are you satisfied?” 

The taut lines of his face loosened and his 
tired eyes warmed. “Ginger, that boy’s doing 
splendidly—remarkably! I’m no end pleased 
with him. Fighting like an old campaigner, but 
he’s trying to swing too much alone. He’s hand¬ 
ling all the Marble Peak slope by himself—just 
the youngster with him. Insisted on it, but it’s 
too much; he has all the theory, but he hasn’t 
had the practice. Still, he’s doing great work, 
Ginger, great work! If I had a man to spare, 
I’d send him over to him, but we’re short our¬ 
selves, and we’ve got a nasty stretch. Well, I 
must be getting back to work, and you must be 
getting back to camp. Tell the folks not to 
worry—we’re getting it under.” 

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‘‘I wish you’d let me stay,” said the girl, mu¬ 
tinously, but she turned her horse and started 
down, and waved back at him just before she 
rounded the bend. He was a gallant figure as 
he stood there, swinging his old wide hat, fighting 
guardian of the hills and the trees he loved. 

Ginger rode very slowly down the trail, and 
when she came to the forks she drew rein. The 
right-hand trail led down to camp, and the other 
wound back by a rising and circuitous route to 
the Marble Peak territory. The air was heavily 
sultry and there was a brooding and ominous 
feeling in it; flakes of ashes and bits of charred 
leaves and now and then a spark fell to the 
ground; the sky was obscured by a low-hanging 
curtain of smoke. There was a sense of menace 
and foreboding, of the relentless advance of an 
implacable foe. 

She sat there for a long moment and she was 
so still that a gray squirrel, anxiously sniffing the 
sinister breeze, came close to her before he was 
aware of her presence. She took swift account 
of her equipment—two large canteens freshly 
filled with water, a compact little case of sand¬ 
wiches, a sharp hatchet in its leather case, three 

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sacks tied to the back of her saddle. Then, with 
her Scotch chin thrust a little forward and her 
Spanish mouth smiling and tender, she turned 
her horse and set swiftly forth on the red trail 
that led to Marble Peak. 



CHAPTER XV 


T HE new Forest Ranger for the Big Sur 
District and Elmer Bunty, his Scout, 
rode rapidly away from the doctor’s 
camp on the night of the lire alarm. They spoke 
sharply and concisely to each other and were 
immensely cool and collected about it all, but each 
of them was high-keyed with excitement. To 
the boy, it was a vivid drama, staged for his 
especial benefit, and to Dean Wolcott it was the 
final stage of his proving. Hotly as he had ex¬ 
ulted when Ginger yielded for that instant and 
keenly as he had wanted that moment with her 
by the creek, away from the gay and strident 
music and the gay and friendly people, he was 
glad, now, for its postponement. When he had 
conquered his first fire he would go to her with 
another decoration, another evidence of his cit¬ 
izenship in her vigorous world: he smiled at his 
heroics but he continued to be satisfied that things 
had worked out as they had. 

235 


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Snort was making for the cottage at Post’s at 
an eager pace and the Mabel horse galloped 
earnestly and clumsily after them, and sometimes 
the rhythm of the hurrying hoofs was like the lilt 
and swing of the music, back at the Lodge . . . 
when Ginger was in his arms. 

There was an hour of swift and sure prepara¬ 
tion and then a snatch of sleep; and at the first 
graying light of dawn they were on their way. 
Rusty, the Airedale, was left at Post’s, but be¬ 
fore they had ridden an hour he had overtaken 
them, panting with a violence which seemed al¬ 
most to rend him asunder, a bit of torn rope 
hanging to his collar. 

“He has to be with me," said Elmer Bunty, 
proudly. “I’ll take care of him, Ranger.” So 
the shabby little dog went on with them, and 
rested thankfully while they made a brief stop 
at the Golinda ranch; Mateo Golinda had left 
an hour earlier for the fire, and his wife would 
ride after them with food and coffee late in the 
afternoon. 

“It’s your first fire, isn’t it?” she said, regard¬ 
ing him thoughtfully with her bright and friendly 
eyes. “It’s hard, heart-breaking work, but I 

236 



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think you’ll enjoy fighting—and winning. Mateo 
is wonderful; he will be at your right hand.” 

She had cleverly calculated the time they would 
be passing and had stirrup cups of hot chocolate 
for them; she set them off as blithely as if they 
had been going to a barbecue. A heartening per¬ 
son, Margaret Golinda; across a continent and an 
ocean, down the long corridor of the years, her 
house would always be “King’s X!” to Dean 
Wolcott. 

They rode on together, the Ranger and the 
Scout on Snort and the Mabel horse with the 
Airedale plodding sturdily behind, and soon there 
was tangible evidence of the red demon in the 
distance. The boy was stout-heartedly ready for 
action and the young man considered him with 
warm and possessive pride. Air and exercise 
and good food had nourished his meager little 
body and comradely appreciation had fed his 
starved soul. A very different creature, this, 
from the one who had come into Pfeiffer’s on the 
stage that day, clinging and timid, and yet the 
old wise women of the ranches told Dean Wol¬ 
cott—“that boy’ll never make old bones,” and 

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the doctor shook his head. “If you’d gotten hold 
of him two years ago—” he said once. 

But the Ranger refused to accept these dark 
forebodings; young Elmer Bunty had wriggled 
his way deep into his reserved affections and he 
had no intention of leaving a stone unturned to 
save him, body and brain. For a week, now, he 
had been revolving schemes in his mind. His 
San Francisco friend had written him, acknowl¬ 
edging receipt of the Scout’s salary for delivery 
to the aunt. 

Your Scout’s relative appeared to-day with her 
usual punctuality to collect the reckless wage 
which you are lavishing upon him, but after be¬ 
stowing it in what I think she would call her 
safety pocket she remarked that it would be her 
last collecting call; she was, she stated, taking 
Edna and going “back east to her husband’s 
folks.” She has long contemplated such a step, 
it appears, but has been deterred by her tender 
consideration for the son of her sister, deceased 
—said Scout above mentioned. Now, however, 
that he is self-supporting and has found a pro¬ 
tector—my impression is that she thinks you are 
not quite all there, old son—she is about to fold 
her tents like the Arabs. Elmer may in future 
keep his entire wage, she says, and saying which, 
departs—so thoroughly that the places which 

238 



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knew her, know her no more. The Edna must 
have been waiting for her outside my office, I 
gather, booted and spurred and ready to ride. 
Thus, in a word, you are now the only known 
human being to whom my measliest Scout can 
turn, and I earnestly urge that you continue to be 
as human as is Bostonly possible! 

Dean Wolcott had made up his mind to leave 
Elmer Bunty in the best California outdoor school 
he could find—somewhere near Santa Barbara, 
perhaps, or in the Santa Cruz mountains—which¬ 
ever climate was best for him, and at holiday 
time—but his mind refused to function coolly on 
plans for the future. That instant’s yielding of 
Ginger to his insistent arms—who could say where 
he would be himself at holiday time ? He dragged 
his thoughts resolutely back to the subject of 
his Scout. The time had come, he thought, to tell 
the youngster that he was going to be his guardian 
—he would go thoroughly into the matter with his 
San Francisco friend, of course. 

But Elmer Bunty broke the silence, before he 
had formulated his plan of announcement. 
“Ranger—say, I don’t guess Edna could call me 
’Eraid-Cat now, could she?— Riding to a forest 
fire’n everything?” 


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“She could not, Scout,” said Dean, cordially. 
This was an excellent opening. “And speaking 
of Edna-” 

The boy appeared not to have heard him. 
“Ranger,” he said shyly, “do you think I—oh, 
not yet, but some time—do you think I’ll be—not 
just a good Scout, but—but like men call each 
other —‘a good scout 7 ? You know how they say, 
‘He’s a good scout’ ? Do you guess I ever will, 
Ranger?” 

“I guess you will , 77 said Dean Wolcott, roundly. 
“I consider you a ‘good scout’ now.” 

“Honest to goodness, Ranger?” He flushed 
so riotously that even his flanging ears grew 
rosy. “Cross-your-heart-hope-never-to-see-the- 
back-of-your-neck ?” 

The Ranger nodded gravely. “In speaking of 
you to a friend I feel I should be certain to use 
that term. ‘Who is this fellow Bunty you’re 
always talking about?’ some one might say to 
me, and I would say, ‘Oh, he’s a great friend of 
mine,’ and then if the other fellow said, ‘What 
sort of a person is he?’— I should without 
hesitation reply, ‘He’s a good scout; he’s—a good 
scout ! 7 77 


240 





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Elmer Bunty was silent from pure pleasure; it 
fairly pulsated from him. He leaned forward 
and put his arms warmly about the neck of the 
lady horse, and then he leaned down out of the 
saddle (much as the Indians did, he firmly be¬ 
lieved) and petted Rusty. 

“And, feeling that way,” said Dean Wolcott, 
“it’s going to be pretty hard for me just to shake 
hands with you and let you go, when your vacation 
is over, and my time here in the Big Sur.” 

“I know,” said the boy, soberly. “But we can 
write each other postcards and maybe letters, 
can’t we, Ranger? And maybe, next sum¬ 
mer-” 

“How would you like to—well, belong to me, 
Scout? If it can be arranged— I mean, not 
go back to your aunt and cousin, but stay with 
me, and go to one of those mountain schools and 
have a horse to ride—all that sort of thing? 
Take a trip east with me, and see the Grand 
Canon on the way, and perhaps Niagara”—he 
turned to look at him. 

Elmer Bunty’s face was white under its hasty 
coat of tan, and his eyes were wide. “Oh, gee!” 
he breathed, “Oh, gee— golly!” Then the light 

241 




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went swiftly out of him. “It would be great, 
Ranger, but I don’t guess I could. I don’t guess 
I could leave my Aunt Lizzie and Edna.” 

“But if they—” 

He shook his head. He was very regretful, 
but very firm about it. “You see, I’m the only 
male person there is in the family, and they de¬ 
pend on me an awful lot. Even if we asked them, 
and they said they would let me go with you, I 
don’t guess I could; I’d know they were just pre¬ 
tending they didn’t need me!” His flat chest 
swelled visibly at the thought. Then he thought 
hungrily of the glories that might be his. “Do they 
honest-to-goodness let you have a horse at those 
schools, Ranger?” 

“They honest-to-goodness do, Scout.” 

“Oh, gee— golly. . . His pale eyes visioned 
it for a dreaming instant, and then he squared 
his narrow shoulders. “But it isn’t as if I didn’t 
have my fam’ly, Ranger. Of course, I’ll be with 
you just as much as I can, and we’ll write each 
other shads of letters, won’t we? But—” 

And Dean Wolcott perceived that there was 
before him a task of extreme delicacy which must 
wait for a less crowded hour. It was going to 

242 



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be a difficult thing to save his Scout’s self-esteem 
alive for him, and to make his joy in the new 
world opening up before him outweigh his bleak 
sense of uselessness; the Ranger’s rage rose in 
him at the thought of Aunt Lizzie and Edna 
. . . crossing the continent smugly in a tourist 
sleeper with food in a greasy shoebox and com¬ 
placency in their hearts. 

But presently they arrived at the fire’s first 
trench and found Mateo Golinda already at work, 
and all lesser concerns gave way. The Spaniard 
was cool and capable and tireless, and almost at 
once he paid Dean Wolcott the supreme compli¬ 
ment of leaving him to work alone with the boy 
while he took charge of another spur of the moun¬ 
tain. 

Long before noon the heat was almost unbear¬ 
able; the August sun bored down through the 
canopy of smoke and the smoke folded the heat 
about them, close and stifling, and their eyes 
stung and watered and their throats were parched 
in spite of frequent sips at the canteens. They 
chopped; they beat the creeping fire with wet 
sacks; they chopped again; then, for a while, they 
worked with spades; then it was time to chop 

243 



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once more, and then the wet sacks. They settled 
down into a steady, unhurried routine—digging, 
chopping, beating, resting for a moment or two, 
snatching a gulp of water; digging, chopping, 
beating. The boy worked gamely and the shabby 
Airedale stayed at his heels, yelping now and 
then when a spark fell on his thinly upholstered 
hide. He kept his tail between his legs and at 
intervals he put his nose in the air and howled 
dismally but he refused to stay behind with the 
horses; Dean Wolcott sent the Scout back from 
time to time to make sure they were safely 
tethered and more especially to give him a 
breathing space, and the dog went thankfully 
widi him, and disapprovingly back again to the 
battle line. 

A party of deer hunters had promised to come 
before twelve o’clock but they did not appear. 
Mateo thought some one might come up from 
Tassajara the next day, and Dean had gotten a 
message through to the Chief Ranger at King’s 
City, but there were other bad fires in the vicinity; 
he might not be able to send help to them at 
once. 

They stopped at dark for a short night’s sleep, 

244 



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Mateo Golinda and the Ranger standing watch, 
turn about, and at dawn they were fighting again 
—digging, chopping, beating at the red tongues 
with their wet sacks. The fire was not getting 
away from them, but they were not getting it 
under; it was an even break between them and the 
red demon. By a miracle of mercy the spring, an 
eighth of a mile below, was on the untouched 
side, and the men took turns in carrying water 
for their sacks, and in filling the canteens. 

Margaret Golinda had ridden up to them, 
late on the first day, with coffee and food, and 
they had sent the Scout far down the trail to 
meet her. 

Dr. Mayfield came on the afternoon of the 
second day, tired and dauntless and full of 
optimism: he admitted that it was a nasty fire 
—the way the wind kept veering about—harder 
to fight than as if it had been concentrated; too 
bad those deer hunters had failed them, but they 
were holding their own in every section; a good, 
stiff fight (the doctor clearly liked a good, stiff 
fight whether it was to save a man or a forest 
of shining madroha ) but they were going to win. 

His own crowd from the camp had come across 

245 



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nobly and the women were working like beavers 
to keep them fed; the boys and Ginger were 
constantly in the saddle. 

“But—look here, Dean—you ought to have 
somebody with you beside your boy. Mateo’s al¬ 
most too far away in case of anything sudden, 
I’ve told you how fast it travels when it starts 
in the bottom of a canon; it’s as if it were sucked 
through a funnel—simply races up— up, roaring.” 

“I think I can swing it,” said Dean Wolcott. 
He looked uncommonly fit and eager and fresh. 

“It means working like two men instead of 
one,” said the doctor, doubtfully. 

“Well, can’t you figure the satisfaction it is 
to me to be able—at last—to work like two 
men?” He swung his arms and pulled in a deep 
contented breath. “I’m enormously happy, Doc¬ 
tor. Please don’t give me a thought.” 

The doctor gave him a great many thoughts 
and they were singularly proud and pleasant ones. 
He stayed an hour with them so that his Ted 
might have a little rest, tethered down the 
trail by Snort and Mabel with his saddle and 
bridle off, but he himself did not require any rest, 
apparently, for he used a shovel and a hatchet 

246 



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and swung a sack all the time he w T as with them. 

They allowed themselves more sleep that night, 
and at dawn Mateo Golinda decided to leave 
them. “I think you will not have more trouble,” 
he said in his careful English, warmed still with 
accent and intonation. “I go home for a day; 
I return to-morrow to make sure all is finished.” 

The Scout sat up and rubbed his eyes. He was 
intensely sleepy and very tired but a little loath 
to have the adventure ended. He made a tour 
of inspection while Dean Wolcott heated their 
coffee, and came importantly back to report that 
everything was quiet—a sullen smoldering here 
and there in the charred blackness, that was all. 

“Fine, Scout. But”—he consulted him gravely 
—“I don’t believe we ought to leave yet, do you?” 

“No; I don’t guess we ought to leave, Ranger. 
We ought to stay on the job to-day and to-night; 
you never can tell.” He wagged his head owl- 
ishly. 

“That’s the way I feel about it, Scout.” This 
would be a good time, he thought—the long and 
lazy day of patroling—to tell Elmer Bunty of 
his aunt’s defection and to spread before him the 
happy plans he had made. Directly they had 

247 



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eaten their scanty breakfast they walked down 
the trail to the horses and saddled them and rode 
two miles to a place where there was lush and 
lavish feed for them—they had been on short 
rations for three days now. It was a gently 
sloping hillside covered with white pines and 
carpeted with fresh and hardy green. The Mabel 
horse whinnied with pleasure at sight of it. They 
removed the saddles and bridles and Snort was 
staked out with a generous length of rope; the 
lady horse would be canny enough to remain with¬ 
out being tied. 

Dean Wolcott meant to have his talk with 
Elmer Bunty as they walked back up the trail but 
they found themselves a little spent and languid; 
the mere business of climbing, afoot, was suffi¬ 
ciently engrossing. They would rest, when they 
got back to their station, and talk in the warm, 
still afternoon. 

But there was to be no rest for the Ranger and 
his Scout that day. A slim snake of fire had 
crawled over from the floor of one canon to 
another, coaxed on by a treacherous wind, whis¬ 
pering close to the ground; by seven in the 
morning it had grown to be a dragon in size 

248 



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and strength and it was roaring up the side of 
the mountain which had been inviolate before; in 
half an hour it would be upon the spot which 
harbored the spring. 

Their tired bodies and their weary wills grew 
taut again. “Water, first,” said Dean Wolcott, 
curtly. They filled their canteens and soaked 
their sacks and staggered up the slope three 
times with slopping buckets, and then they worked 
fast and furiously on their firebreak. Almost 
without pause birds flew past them, coming up 
from below, uttering strange cries, and presently 
small, shy beasts began to run up to them and 
past them. 

“Look, Scout,” said Dean, softly. “I’ve heard 
about it and read of it, but I’ve never seen it 
before—wild things fleeing before a forest fire. 
Let’s stand aside here and watch for a moment. 
Come over here, where you can see down.” 

They came swiftly and silently, panting with 
haste, their soft eyes wild—squirrels and little 
bush rabbits scurrying by the dozen; now a pair 
of small foxes running low; a wildcat, crouching, 
slinking, belly to the ground; coyotes, gaunt and 
gray and furtive; does and fawns, and four or 

249 



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five great bucks driven out of cover at last, and 
at the end of the hurrying horde a mountain lion 
and his mate. There was something primeval 
about it; something simple, and far-away; Dean 
Wolcott held his breath. 

“Oh, gee— golly, Ranger,” the boy whispered, 
pressing against him, “get your gun! Get your 
gun! Get your gun!” 

“No, Scout,” he whispered back. “It’s against 
the law-—written and unwritten; wild things flee¬ 
ing from a forest fire are protected. Look at 
their eyes as they go past. Could you?—” 

“No, I don’t guess I could, Ranger.” His chin 
quivered a little. 

“What does it make you think of, Scout?” 

“A circus?” His face fell. “I saw a moving 
picture once—” 

“It’s like creation; it’s the first chapter of 
Genesis. . . . Boy, it isn’t given to many to see 
a thing like this; we must remember it all the 
days of our life. We are watching the earth bring 
forth the living creature . . . cattle and creeping 
thing and beast of the earth. . . .” 

“Yes, sir,” said the Scout, earnestly. 

All the animals for miles about must have 


250 



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been congregated in that canon; it had been, until 
now, scatheless, and there was water, but their 
sanctuary had betrayed them and they were fleeing 
for their lives from the red terror, passing the 
lesser enemy with hardly a conscious look. They 
came on for an incredible time but there was an 
end of them at last. Small stragglers came 
gasping at the heels of the procession and scur¬ 
ried by; then the slope was empty of movement. 

Dean Wolcott drew a long breath. “Now, 
we’ll get to work, Scout; plenty of time to stop it.” 

But the boy pointed excitedly. “Look—there’s 
one more lion, all alone!” 

It was far below them, standing still, a beau¬ 
tiful great beast, and it lifted its head and called, 
a long, seeking, mournful cry. 

“It’s lost its mate, Scout; it doesn’t want to 
go without it. That’s pretty fine, isn’t it, with 
the fire just three jumps behind?” 

Elmer Bunty nodded solemnly and they set to 
work. They already had a firebreak of sorts 
in that direction and now they widened it as fast 
as they could, plying hatchets and shovels. The 
fire came up the mountainside just as the doctor 
had said it did, as if sucked through a funnel, 

251 



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roaring, unbearably hot. The lone lion fled before 
it at last, loping forlornly and calling as it came; 
it passed between the two human beings heed¬ 
lessly, engulfed in its private woe. 

Their break held; the fire stopped when it 
came up to it, hissing and snarling; burning twigs 
snapped with a sharp, incisive sound. “We’ve 
got it,” said the Ranger, exulting. “It’s just like 
a football game, Scout!—” He chanted hoarsely 
a slogan of old gridiron days—“ ‘Hold that line! 
Hold that line! Hold that line— hard!’ ” But 
it appeared immediately that they would have to 
hold a great deal harder yet and in a great many 
more places, for a whirling dervish of a wind 
sprang up, whisked here, whisked there, twisted 
and turned unexpectedly, caught up a flaming leaf 
and carried it carefully to a distant patch of 
dried grass, ran impishly back and forth, whis¬ 
tling, whining, making hot havoc. 

Again they went about their dogged routine; 
they chopped with their hatchets, they spaded, 
they beat upon the fire with their wet sacks— 
until there was no water left to make the sacks 
wet with. Dean Wolcott thought with worship¬ 
ful longing of summer rains in the east; why did 

252 




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they never come to this parched land of summer? 
A downpour now . . . the sound of rushing 
rain. . . . 

They worked, the young man and the thin Boy 
Scout, until it seemed certain that they could not 
work any longer, and then they worked on. They 
dug frantically into the sun-baked earth; they 
chopped frantically with their hatchets into the 
singeing chaparral; they slapped frantically at 
the flames with their dry sacks; and sometimes the 
sacks caught on fire. Then the witch-wind went 
away as suddenly as it had come, and up from the 
ocean—as if impelled by the Ranger’s rain- 
prayer—rose a dense gray fog, blessedly cool, 
blessedly wet, blessedly enveloping. 

At the end of another hour they were able 
to stop; a charred world was smudging sullenly 
into a soft, gray curtain. They went a few 
yards back on the trail and dropped thankfully to 
the ground. They were utterly spent; their hair 
was singed, and their eyebrows, and they could 
hardly see out of their bleared and smarting 
eyes, and they had both burned their hands again 
and again. They were too weary to speak, but 
somewhere in the great gray space they heard the 
lone lion, calling . . . calling. . . . 

253 



CHAPTER XVI 


first, when she set out on the trail for 



Marble Peak, Ginger hurried a little. 


-*■ She had a guilty fear that the doctor 
might have read her mutinous purpose in her face 
and ridden after her to make sure, but when ten 
minutes had passed she knew she was not being 
followed, and she ceased to urge her mount. The 
fire fighters had exhausted the camp’s supply of 
good horses and this was an old and spiritless 
beast, hardly more than adequate for the daily 
trip with supplies. 

“Easy, now, Pedro,” she patted the lean neck. 
“We’ll take it easy, old boy.” She saw she 
would have to nurse him along very carefully to 
make the ride, but once they came up with Dean 
he could rest, and she felt rather ruthless. Her 
only real concern was getting to Dean, and she 
felt as she had felt that day in Boston, waiting in 
the hushed little hotel for an answer to her note. 
Yet there was a great and shining difference. 


254 


CORDUROY 


That had been undertaken as a duty of decent 
reparation; beyond the fact that she was going 
to ask his pardon or at least to state her regret 
for her crude and callous behavior at Dos Pozos, 
she had not mentally set the stage. 

This was no penitential pilgrimage but a glad 
and glorious journey, ending, as journeys should, 
in lovers’ meeting, and this time she had indeed 
set the stage; she had been doing it ever since 
she had felt the sudden tightening of his arms 
about her as they danced in the Lodge to the 
wheedling, coaxing music of the old slave tune. 
“Come out!” he had said, imperatively. “Come 
down to the creek; I must talk to you. Will you 
come, Ginger? You must come!” She remem¬ 
bered every commonplace syllable and invested it 
with poesy and ardor, and she planned rosily for 
the scene of their reunion and reconciliation. She 
wished a little that she might have worn her 
riding suit of deep cream linen with the scarlet 
tie and hat band instead of her seasoned corduroy, 
but corduroy was the only wear for work of this 
sort, and Dean Wolcott himself, the new Dean 
Wolcott, wore corduroy now; he had put on the 
official uniform of the outdoor working west. 

255 



CORDUROY 


And besides, she told herself contentedly, she was 
bringing him other adornments; she took stock, 
with a proud humility which was new and strange 
to Ginger McVeagh, of her more careful speech, 
her gentler judgments, the clever choosing of 
her clothes, her honest appreciation of the things 
of his world. Her heart warmed at the memory 
of Dean Wolcott’s sympathy with Elmer Bunty’s 
great moment, the other night, riding madly up 
on the lady horse to bring the news of the forest 
fire, of the way in which he had kept his Scout in 
the limelight for an instant. Dr. Mayfield had told 
her that the child would never live to grow up; he 
gave him, in fact, hardly more than a year, but 
Ginger, riding the high wave of happiness, told 
herself that she would prove her friend wrong 
for once in his wise life. Elmer Bunty should 
go to Dos Pozos to be cuddled by old Manuela 
and fed by Ling, to drink golden milk and sleep 
out in the tonic air all through the calendar; 
death on a pale horse riding should be routed 
—she felt strong and victorious as she thought 
of it. Great surges of joy went over her as they 
had done when she sat in her perch at Carnegie 
Hall, hearing her first symphonies. 

256 



CORDUROY 


But no surges of joy of any size whatever were 
going over Pedro; the wretched animal was plod¬ 
ding miserably, his head hanging, and the girl 
drew rein, dismounted, and pulled off the saddle 
with guilty haste. She would give him a half hour 
of rest while she ate her supper, and then go on 
at a very moderate pace, walking where the 
grade was steepest. 

The horse managed a precarious roll where the 
trail widened a trifle and stayed level for a brief 
space, and then he cropped without enthusiasm 
at the sere grass. Ginger ate her substantial sand¬ 
wich with hearty young hunger and regarded the 
rest of her supply somewhat wistfully: she could 
have finished it, to the last crumb, but she was 
sure Dean Wolcott would need extra rations. It 
was an amazing thing: at Dos Pozos, when he 
had been weak and wasted, she had been hard; 
now that he was as fit as she was herself, she 
yearned over him. She had met his weakness 
with scornful strength, and now she met his 
strength with a rich and mothering tenderness. 

Dusk was creeping up the canon when she flung 
the saddle on Pedro again. “We’ll do it in two 
hours,” she told herself, “taking it slowly.” It 

257 



CORDUROY 


was hard to be hobbled by a stumbling, tired, old 
horse when she wanted a Pegasus, a steed who 
could— 

She halted sharply, the bridle in her hand. A 
horse was coming down the trail, running, plung¬ 
ing, the stones scattering before his flying feet, 
and it sounded like disaster of some sort. People 
did not ride down the Marble Peak trail at a 
pace like that. An instant later Snort came into 
view and with him came reassurance, for he was 
without saddle and bridle and a long grazing 
rope swung behind him. One never tied Snort 
securely, the girl remembered, because of his 
dangerous habit of pulling back, and he had evi¬ 
dently become terrorized at the approach of the 
fire, discovered that his rope was merely wound 
in and out of a stout bush, and taken to his 
heels. 

He halted now, at sight of her, trumpeting as 
wildly as ever in the days of ’Rome Ojeda, clearly 
considered the inadvisability of trying to pass her 
and her mount, wheeled, started up the trail again 
in the direction from which he had come, remem¬ 
bered the thing that had frightened him, turned 
again and plunged down the steep incline which 

258 



CORDUROY 


led to the canon’s floor. She could hear him 
crashing, fighting his way through the tangle of 
brush and low-growing shrubs and tripping vines, 
snorting as he went. 

He was down at last, but hysterical with nerves; 
he could be heard dashing forward, dashing back, 
stumbling, plunging into traps and fighting his 
way out again; shrilly sounding his fear. 

Ginger nodded with satisfaction. Here was 
a task; here was a thing to do for Dean. There 
would be a tremendous satisfaction in bringing 
Snort back to him. . . . The stage for their 
meeting was hastily reset. Not on the tired and 
stumbling Pedro, after all, but mounted on the 
historic steed who had parted them and was to 
bring them together again. 

“I’ve brought Snort back to you!” 

It made good imagining, the look on his face 
when he should see the two of them. 

She tied the uninterested Pedro securely and 
hung her saddle with the canteens and sacks and 
the packet of sandwiches over a limb, took her 
little hatchet in hand and climbed carefully down 
into the canon. It was too dimly lighted to make 
out the animal at the bottom, but he was clearly 

259 



CORDUROY 


to be heard, and she called to him, soothingly, 
coaxingly, cajolingly, and he stopped plunging to 
listen for an instant. 

“Good old boy, Snort . . . good . . . old 
. . . boy?” The velvet voice steadied him. She 
could hear his great gasping breaths but he was 
not trumpeting; it was going to be easy, after 
all, and she was conscious, tolerantly amused at 
herself, of a little regret. The longer the chase, 
the harder the struggle, the more she was doing; 
the handsomer her service, the more dramatic 
her entrance. Dusk was coming rapidly up above 
and the green depths were in dark shadow; she 
should have brought her flash light. If the pixie 
steed refused to be taken in hand at once, if there 
ensued even a slight delay, they would be in 
darkness. With a sigh of impatience at her 
heedlessness, Ginger turned and scrambled up 
the steep incline again, slipping, pulling herself 
up by vines and roots, reached the trail, dug out 
the flash, and started down again. 

This time, a little breathless, hurrying, careless 
of the failing light, she did not watch her foot¬ 
holds and a large and permanent looking stone 

260 



CORDUROY 


turned under her, almost tripping her, and went 
hurtling down. 

“It won’t—it won’t—it won’t hit him!” she 
told herself vehemently, in prayerful assertion, 
but, if it did not, it grazed him closely enough 
to have the same result, for she could hear him 
rearing and crashing in a way that made his 
former panic seem like composure by comparison. 
Presently, the sounds warned her, he had headed 
back toward Marble Peak and the conflagration. 

And now the episode left off being an amusing 
little adventure and assumed the outlines of a 
grim task. Ginger shook off her temper and her 
disgust at her own carelessness, and looked in¬ 
tently about her. It would be half an hour, and 
perhaps more, before she brought Snort up, and 
she must make sure of finding her station on the 
trail, and Pedro. She mentally catalogued an 
oddly square rock, a grotesquely twisted root, 
took off her scarlet bandanna and tied it to a low 
limb, before she made her cautious descent. 

Two hours, dark and difficult ones, were to pass 
before she found her landmarks again. Her little 
wish to do her lover a service had come largely 

261 



CORDUROY 


true: she had toiled in his cause as she had never 
toiled before in all her vigorous young life. 

Snort had reverted swiftly to type; he was 
'Rome Ojeda's horse, and not Dean Wolcott’s. 
Memories of remorseless punishments for mis¬ 
demeanors like this came back to him; clearly 
he weighed in his mind the relative tragedies of 
proceeding into the heart of the burning district 
and of permitting himself to be caught. He 
would turn, snorting with fear as a gust of wind 
brought hot smoke and stinging sparks, and start 
backward, yet when Ginger, edging and inching 
craftily closer, the velvet of her voice roughening 
with huskiness—“Steady, boy, Snort . . . good 
. . . old . . . boy . . —put out her hand to 
take his rope he would wheel again, choosing the 
red danger ahead. 

Ginger’s hat went in the first quarter of an hour 
and her hair was dragged down and filled with 
leaves and bits of broken vines and there was a 
red scratch on her cheek; she was hot, breathless, 
dripping. The easy and comfortable thing which 
she would have called her religion was a quaint 
quilting of Alexander McVeagh’s rugged Scotch 
Presbyterianism and old Manuela’s handy and 

262 



CORDUROY 


available santos, Aleck’s sane and hearty creed of 
playing the game, and her own childishly cher¬ 
ished habit of wishing on white horses and red¬ 
headed girls, on loads of hay and shooting stars, 
and she brought it out now and aired it and shook 
it into service and kept up her courage, for there 
was a brief period when it seemed that she would 
not only fail in bringing the wild horse to her 
lover but would inevitably lose herself. 

“Steady, Snort, old boy . . . good . . . old 
. . . boy!” she would croon, adding, between 
tight shut teeth— “Devil—demon — fend! Oh, if 
I only knew what it was that Balaam did to the 
horse in The Virginian I’d do it to you—when I 
catch you—only harder! —No, I wouldn’t, Snort, 
poor old boy, dear old boy. . . . Good . . . old 
. . . boy. . . .” 

The climax came suddenly, after all. Snort 
twisted his rope round a tree, went three times 
round himself, and was prisoned, pulling back, 
snorting shrilly, throwing himself twice, but 
standing still at last, showing the whites of his 
eyes in the moonlight w T hich now poured down 
into the canon in a silver flood, his heaving sides 
lathered with sweat. 


263 



CORDUROY 


Ginger sat limply down close by and leaned 
her head back against a cool rock. “I tried just 
as hard as that, to get away from him—and stay 
away from him—” she said, grimly. “But I’m 
going back, and you’re going with me.” She 
sighed, utterly tired and utterly content. “It 
sure does look,” she spoke as ’Rome Ojeda would 
have spoken, “it sure does look like he’s gentled 
us both!” 

Presently, when girl and beast were breathing 
normally again, she led him back to the point 
where she had left the trail, and Pedro made 
his one valuable contribution to the expedition 
by whinnying loudly and guiding them up. 

Ginger flung the saddle blanket over Snort’s 
steaming back, turned up her collar, and sat 
down, the runaway’s rope in her hand, to wait 
for the first graying of the dawn. 

“I have brought Snort back to you.” 

After all, she was going to be able to say it. 
She folded her arms across her knees and laid 
her throbbing head on them, and slept a little 
in snatches, dreaming high-colored, stirring 
dreams. 




CHAPTER XVII 


D EAN WOLCOTT and his Scout slept 
soddenly for hours and woke, aching 
and hungry, in the early dusk. 

“Well, this is a bone-headed business, Scout,” 
said the Ranger, disgustedly. “We should have 
got back to the horses by daylight. Tumble out! 
We’ll have to shake a leg!” 

The boy pulled himself gallantly together but 
he was clearly exhausted. “Oh, we’ve got our 
flash light, Ranger. We’ll be all right!” 

“We’ll be all right as long as the flash holds 
out, but it needs a new battery, and the new 
battery is in the saddlebags at White Pines.” 
He shook off the mantling fatigue. “We’ll be all 
right anyway, of course. It won’t be pitch dark 
for an hour yet, and we’ll save the light till we 
absolutely need it. Wait—let’s see how we’re 
fixed for water!” He picked up the canteens and 
investigated. “Water’s your best friend, old son, 
and we’re going to have prize thirsts for days 

265 


CORDUROY 


to come. What?— Yes, of course, there’s the 
spring at White Pines, but it’s beastly hard to 
locate after dark.” 

He found that they had less than a canteen be¬ 
tween them so he made the boy rest again while 
he clambered down the charred and fog-drenched 
slope to the spring. It was trampled and muddied 
by the fleeing animals and choked with burnt 
leaves and twigs; it was a slow job to fill the 
two canteens and make his way back to the trail, 
and he found the Scout asleep. 

“Tumble, out, old boy!” he said, rousing him 
reluctantly, for he looked white and spent and 
very childish in the half light. “But we w T ant to 
get back to Snort and Mabel, don’t we?” 

“You betcher!” said Elmer Bunty, stoutly. 

“All set? Right! Hike along behind me; 
we can see for almost an hour, and it won’t take 
us long to get there.” 

“Say, Ranger, why don’t we go the short cut 
over the hill—the one Mr. Golinda showed me? 
It saves a mile.” 

“I’m not sure enough of it in the dusk, Scout; 
we might waste more time fooling about looking 
for it than in keeping to the main trail.” 

266 



CORDUROY 


“No, we wouldn’t! I know it, sure as shooting, 
Ranger. He showed me that first day when I 
went down to meet Mrs. Golinda and I came 
back all alone! I can find it, Ranger!” 

It didn’t matter particularly, Dean thought, if 
they did poke about in the twilight for an extra 
half hour; if the youngster could dramatize the 
dreary stumble through the damp dusk, let him. 
He had a surprisingly good sense of direction. 

“That’s a Scout’s business, scouting ” said the 
boy, contentedly. 

“Right. Lead off, old top.” 

The Scout with Rusty at heel set forward with 
amazing briskness. “I remembered this funny 
shaped madroha tree right here. And a little 
ways ahead there’s a big rock, hanging right over 
us. . . He trudged sturdily. “I don’t 

guess we’ll have much to eat to-night, will we, 
Ranger ?” 

“Well, not what you’d call a banquet, Scout. 
But we’ll munch a few raisins and a cracker and 
do a Rip Van Winkle, and dream about the break¬ 
fast Mrs. Golinda’s going to give us in the morn¬ 
ing. We’ll be up with the lark and pop in on 
her and meanwhile we can feed our fancies on 

267 



CORDUROY 


the thought of her coffee and golden muffins and 
broiled ham and scrambled-” 

“Ow,” said the Scout, ruefully. “I wisht you 
wouldn’t. ... I betcher she’ll give Rusty a bone, 
too. I like that lady an awful lot, don’t you, 
Ranger?” 

“Best in the world, Scout.” 

“And I like that girl that the doctor lets ride 
Ted, don’t you, Ranger?” 

“Yes,” said Dean Wolcott, “yes, son, I like 
that girl.” He threw back his head and laughed 
aloud. “Oh, boy, I like that girl!” 

“Me, too,” said Elmer Bunty. 

He was making good progress considering the 
fast fading light but the dark was coming dowm 
on them like a released curtain. Dean experi¬ 
mented with his flash and found that it gave out 
only the palest possible gleam; it must be kept 
for emergencies. 

“Oh, gee— golly!” said the boy, suddenly. 
“It’s still burning down there, Ranger! Look!” 

Some of the territory which Mateo Golinda 
had considered out of danger had relapsed again; 
it was not a dangerous burning—a low, smudging, 
stubborn fire which could not make great headway 
against the fog. 


268 




CORDUROY 


“I don’t think it can do any harm, Scout. 
Mateo Golinda will be back in the morning to 
look things over.” 

“Oh, gee . . .” said the Scout, “this way seems 
most as long as the regular trail, doesn’t it? But 
we’re nearly there, I guess.” Then he quite evi¬ 
dently revived his fainting spirits with stimulant. 
“Say, Ranger, we might be trappers or pioneers 
or— anything, mightn’t we?—sneaking along like 
this? Or Pontiac, Chief of the Ottawas! Say, 
I betcher it was slick to be an Indian chief . . . 
or even an Indian brave. . . . Gee, golly, but it’s 
getting dark, isn’t it, Ranger?” 

“Shut your eyes for a minute, Scout, and then 
open them; it will seem lighter.” 

“Say, it does, doesn’t it?” He plodded stur¬ 
dily on. 

“I’d keep away from the edge, Scout; it’s wet 
and slippery, and a misstep would mean a bad 
tumble.” 

“All right, Ranger; only, we have to keep 
pretty near the edge because that’s where the 
trail is. . . . Yes, sir, I betcher it was fine to be 
an Indian brave—hunting and fishing and having 
the squaws to do all the messy things; and battles 

269 



CORDUROY 


. . . hanging down on your horse and shooting 
under his neck— Ow!” He stumbled and caught 
himself. “Gee, I nearly did fall that time, 
Ranger.” 

“Look here, Scout,” said Dean sharply, “I be¬ 
lieve we’d better stretch right out here and wait 
till daylight. Let me go ahead, at any rate. My 
turn to lead, now!” 

“I want to get back to Mabel,” said the boy, 
doggedly. “It must be pretty near, now, Ranger. 

. . . And when a brave died in battle they tied 
him on his faithful horse and brought him back 
to camp, didn’t they? Gee ... I betcher all 
the squaws cried like anything. . . . Tied on his 
faithful horse. . . . Say, Ranger, you know I 
think that’s lot more exciting than just hearses 
and hacks, don’t you?” 

"Much more exciting, old son!” His heart 
warmed within him—the game little sport, plod¬ 
ding through the damp darkness, aching-tired, 
hungry. 

“When my uncle died, Aunt Lizzie, she had an 
awful stylish hearse and there was eleven hacks; 
she hated to pay out such a lot of money but she 
said nobody could never say she didn’t give him 

270 




CORDUROY 


a stylish funeral. ... It was a grand hearse, all 
right, but I think ‘tied on his faithful horse . . .’ ” 
He was silent then, for he had to stop and peer 
owlishly through the darkness and take hold of 
trees and get down on his hands and knees and 
feel for the path. “It’s all right, Ranger 1 We’re 
keeping on the trail, all right!” He got up and 
went forward again, inching his way. “Say, I 
don’t guess Edna could ever—” he broke off at 
a disturbing thought. “Say, Ranger, you know, 
Edna's an awful funny girl . . . she just won’t 
believe a person. If I tell her about riding Mabel 
and fighting fires and finding trails in the dark, 
she’ll just laugh and say ‘XJh- huh! Uh- huh! Yes, 
you did! Yes, you did not!* I was just wondering 
. . . if you should ever come to see my Aunt 

Lizzie and me and my cousin Edna, maybe you 
could kind of—drop a word—” 

“I could tell that Edna girl things that would 
make her hair grow upside down,” said Dean 
Wolcott, heartily. “I could tell her things I’ve 
seen you do, and dangers I’ve seen you experi¬ 
encing that would keep her awake nights! I 
could—and I would, with pleasure.” (As long 
as he said could and would instead of can and will, 


271 



CORDUROY 


he wasn’t lying to the child; when they were fed 
and bathed and rested he would tell him about his 
Aunt Lizzie and his cousin.) “Scout, let me go 
ahead, now. You walk behind me and hang on to 
my belt. It’s too dark for you to—” 

But the boy gave a little chuckle of delighted 
satisfaction. “Well, if you told her . . Although 
they could not see each other, he turned his head 
and spoke to him over his shoulder. His voice was 
hoarse and he choked a little. “Oh, gee— golly, 
Ranger, I do like you! I do —” He slipped, and 
struggled to catch himself, battled for an instant 
while Dean Wolcott sprang toward him, toppled 
over the edge of the slippery trail into the black 
canon. 

He screamed as he fell. It seemed to the young 
man that the long, thin scream of terror would 
never stop, but when it stopped suddenly, utterly, 
as if it had been turned off by machinery, it was 
worse. 

“Scout! Oh, Scout! Are you all right? I’ll 
come after you, Scout! Scout! Can you call, so 
I can find you? Oh, Scout!’’ 

The Airedale, whining, terrified, flung himself 
against him. “Find, Rusty! Find!” he said. 

272 



CORDUROY 


“Find Scout! Find, Rusty, find!” The dog went 
swiftly over the edge and down, and Dean could 
hear his sharp staccato barks; it was much as if 
he were trailing a rabbit. 

The Ranger leaned over and turned his feeble 
spot light into the blackness, but it made a little 
mocking circle—a tiny tunnel into the dark which 
led nowhere. He started down; he could hear the 
dog and follow him, and the dog would find the 
boy. “Scout!” he called. “Oh, Scout! I’m com¬ 
ing, old son! I’m coming!” 

Then his feet shot from under him and he fell. 
He clutched frantically at the chaparral and at 
the ground as he slid over it, and he had a clear 
instant of horrified realization that it was hot . . . 
hot. Then some one seemed to rise up out of the 
night and fell him with a blow upon his head, and 
he stopped realizing altogether. 

The thing that disturbed him and brought him 
back to consciousness, that made him struggle back 
from pleasant peacefulness to pain and bewilder¬ 
ment was a prolonged and bitter howling. . . . He 
thought at first that it was the mountain lion which 
had lost its mate; then he recognized the voice as 

273 



CORDUROY 


that of Rusty, the Airedale, and everything that 
had happened came back to him. 

He found that he was lying with his head 
against a tree; no one would ever know why he 
hadn’t broken his neck. He got his arms around 
the tree and dragged himself to his feet, and col¬ 
lapsed again, giddy and faint, but the howling kept 
up, unbearably, and this time he pulled himself 
to his hands and knees and started at a snail’s 
progress in the direction of the sound. 

They were not very far away from him, the 
Airedale and the Scout, though it took him some 
time to reach them. The dog was circling about, 
varying his lament now and then with a yelp of 
pain for the ground was almost covered with 
smudging embers, but the boy was wholly still. 

The young man laid shaking hands upon him 
and found to his horror that the Scout’s uniform 
was on fire in several places, and he pulled off his 
coat and wrapped it about the inert body and 
beat out the little blazes with his bare hands, and 
still Elmer Bunty made no sound. It was neces¬ 
sary, first of all, Dean told himself, forcing him¬ 
self to think collectedly in spite of the wild throb¬ 
bing of his head, of the sense of nightmare unreal- 

274 



CORDUROY 


ity about it, to get him away from this particular 
spot where there was so much smoldering fire. 
Back there by the tree, where he had struck, there 
had been no fire; therefore, he would take him 
over there—he was sure he could locate it. Be¬ 
sides, the moon was coming up; the radium face 
of his wrist watch said that it was time for the 
moon to come up; he counted childishly upon its 
coming. Now he got his hands under the boy’s 
armpits and began to drag him, cautiously, for 
fear of slipping, along the ground, and at the first 
movement the Scout came out of his swoon and 
screamed as he had screamed when he fell 

“It’s all right, old son,” said the Ranger, sooth¬ 
ingly, “it’s all right! You had a nasty fall, but 
Rusty found you, and then I found you, and now 
we’re all-” 

But the boy cried out again in agony. “Don’t— 
move me! Don’t touch me!” 

“I know, Scout—those burns hurt horribly, but 
as soon as I get you up on the trail—” he began 
gently to drag him again, but Elmer Bunty beat 
at him with one feeble hand. 

“Oh—Ranger— don’t! I can’t— breathe —I’m 

275 




CORDUROY 


all—broken—to pieces —” he was sobbing, gasp¬ 
ing. 

Then the young man stopped dragging him and 
laid him gently down on the ground and began 
to feel of his legs and his arms and his back with 
slow, probing fingers, and the Scout bore it with 
what heroism he could muster until Dean reached 
his back, and then he screamed again, more ter¬ 
ribly than before, and mercifully fainted. This 
time the Ranger was able with infinite pains and 
unbelievable exertion to get him back up the slope 
to the trail before he recovered consciousness and 
began the dreadful sobbing again. He could move 
one arm and hand and he touched the back of his 
head. 

“My head is . . . leaking,” he said. “I don’t 
guess it’s . . . blood, do you . . . Ranger?” 

“It is bleeding, a little, Scout.” He was strip¬ 
ping off his own shirt and tearing it into bandages. 
“I expect you struck it on a rock; I whanged into 
a tree myself, you know, or I’d have been over 
there with you sooner.” He wound the khaki 
strips about the head, covering the great jagged 
cut; the blood spurted warmly over his fingers 
while he worked. 


276 




CORDUROY 


“Now, Scout,” he said, kneeling over him, “this 
is the stiffest job we ever had to do together; it’s 
worse than ten forest fires. Are you game for it? 
Are you going to stand by me ? Rusty found you, 
and I’ve brought you up, and Mabel is waiting 
for you, but you’ve got the hardest part of all; 
you’ve got to let me carry you.” He bent closer. 
“There’s a good Scout!” 

“No, Ranger, no! I can’t— please—” 

“I know how those burns are smarting, and I 
know there’s something for the doctor to mend, 
but we’ve got to get out of here—that fire is 
coming up again, Scout; we’ve got to go; we’ve 
got to go as the animals went yesterday—remem¬ 
ber? Now I’m going to carry you just as gently 
and easily as I can, but—I’m going to carry you. 
We’re going to Golindas’, and Mrs. Golinda will 
help us till Mateo can bring the doctor—there’ll 
be a soft bed, Scout, and warm food, and dressing 
for the burns—” His own emergency case—he 
cursed his heedlessness—was in the saddlebag at 
White Pines. 

Once Dean Wolcott had seen a small bedrag¬ 
gled kitten defending itself against a terrier. He 
had broken its back, apparently, for it could not 

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rise, but it lay there, embattled, fending him off 
with its tiny, futile claws. Before he could rush 
downstairs and out into the yard—it was over. 
It was like that now, he thought, sickened, the way 
the child beat him off with his one hand . . . the 
way he must close in on him. ... “I don’t dare 
let you wait, Scout; I don’t dare —not to do this!” 

He got him up at last, face downward, over his 
shoulder, steadying him and holding him with 
both hands, talking to him, crooning to him, sooth¬ 
ing him, walking slowly for fear of falling, walk¬ 
ing faster for fear of the galloping moments. 
Every atom of his will, every cell of his brain, 
every nerve of his body was mobilized; he felt 
curiously light and free and strong; he could carry 
his burden like this for hours if need be. 

Then the moon came up, just as he had calcu¬ 
lated that it must, the waning moon, lopsided and 
sagging, pouring its clear effulgence down on the 
somber hills, on the black mountain peaks, spill¬ 
ing it down into the depths of canons—into his 
canon there, and into Ginger’s canon, miles away 
on the home trail. 

“Ah,” he said, joyfully, “now we’re all right, 
aren’t we, Scout? Now we can make speed! But 

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first Pm going to put you down and have another 
look, and see if I can’t make you a little more 
comfortable.” He eased him to the ground with 
passionate care but the child never ceased his low 
sobbing. 

The moon illumined him whitely; it showed the 
Ranger everything there was to see; it played 
over Elmer Bunty like a searchlight of radium; it 
seemed to pierce through and through his broken 
little body. 

Dean Wolcott got up from his inspection and 
walked away a few paces and stood looking blindly 
down into the silvered ravine. When he came 
back and sat down beside the boy his voice sounded 
ragged and uneven. “I think we’ll rest here 
awhile, Scout,” he said. “We won’t try to go on, 
just now.” 

“No,” said the Scout, gasping, grateful, “we 
won’t—go on—” The Airedale snuggled close 
to him and lapped his hand and wrist without 
ceasing. “Rus-ty . . .” said the boy with difficulty, 
and then—“ . . . wisht that Mabel was . . .” 

“What is it, Scout?” Dean bent his head low 
to listen. 

“I don’t guess Edna . . —-the words trailed 

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away, feeble, uncertain—“ ’Fraid-Cat ... all 
burnt’n everything . . . not crying . . . much . . 

And then, in spite of what he had said, the 
Scout left his friend and his dog and went on, 
alone. 

Now it was hideously easy to carry him. It 
seemed to Dean Wolcott as if he must walk on 
without pausing, past Golindas’, through the doc¬ 
tor’s camp, to Monterey, to San Francisco, bear¬ 
ing the small, broken body in his arms until he 
found the Scout Master, and said—“See, I have 
brought him back to you, Elmer Bunty, the boy 
you sent me, the one I ordered especially—to 
whom I could boast and brag of my woodcraft 
and wisdom. I said I would make a man of him. 
You see what I have made of him.” 

It was almost grotesque to find how near they 
had been to White Pines all along, and it was 
another world, clean and green and fresh. He 
laid the Scout down on a bed of bending brakes 
and went methodically to look after the horses. 

Snort was gone. The Mabel horse greeted him 
thankfully, but his own mount, the wild red roan 

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CORDUROY 


who had betrayed him at Dos Pozos, had deserted 
him now in his dark hour. 

He offered a cracker to Rusty but the dog re¬ 
fused it in bitter preoccupation. The lone lion 
was calling his mate quite close to them now, but 
the Airedale paid no heed. 

Dean Wolcott sat down beside the body of his 
Scout, his head bare, his heart heavy, his face hid¬ 
den in his hands. The sound of the mourning 
beast’s lament fitted blackly into his mood. The 
world was a bleak place of loss. The quaint, 
engaging little creature who had established him¬ 
self so snugly in his heart was dead; Snort was 
gone; he had only imagined that Ginger yielded 
to his arms that night, that far-away night of 
laughing and music at the Lodge. Ginger would 
go back to her cattle ranch and marry ’Rome 
Ojeda: she had spent a whole winter in the east 
and never made him a sign. It would not be 
necessary, now that he had seen her, and demon¬ 
strated his brilliant ability to sit a horse, to go to 
Dos Pozos. He would telegraph the regular 
Ranger to come back and release him: then he 
would return to Boston, to the Wolcott connec¬ 
tion, to cool, correct, comfortable people who 

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lived upstairs in their minds—who did not harry 
body and heart like this. 

And then his aching and rebellious grief for his 
good Scout came over him and shook him like a 
harsh wind, and he gave way to it unashamed, 
thankful for solitude. 

But Rusty, the Airedale, rose at the strange 
sound and left his deathwatch to come padding 
softly over to him. He pressed hard against him 
with his shabby little body; he put his forefeet on 
the young man’s knees and reached upward, lap¬ 
ping the cold, clenched hands with his warm 
tongue. 




CHAPTER XVIII 


G inger came to him in the morning, rid¬ 
ing over the crest of the hill with the 
sunrise. It was as if she had found the 
new day, somewhere in the black misery of the 
night, and given it to him. 

He was saddling Mabel and he stopped and 
stared at her, bewildered, unbelieving. 

“I have brought Snort back to you,” she said, 
just as she had planned to say. Her hair was 
twisted into a knot but there were still leaves and 
bits of vines clinging to it, and the bramble scratch 
was red on her brown cheek. “I was coming to 
help you, when I found him. The doctor wouldn’t 
let me come, but I came. I was hours catching 
Snort, but I was coming to you all the time. I’ve 
been coming to you all night—all year!” She 
rode close to him and slipped into his arms, and 
they clung to each other wordlessly. It was their 
peak in Darien, and they were silent upon it. 
Silence flowed over them, clarifying, healing, and 

283 


CORDUROY 


when it passed it took away with it forever their 
stubborn pride, the bitterness and the bleak mis¬ 
understanding. 

“I did try to find you," said Ginger, lifting her 
face and looking gravely into his eyes. “In the 
east, I mean. I went to Boston to find you and tell 
you—and ask you—I sent a note to you at your 
house, and I waited in a little hotel. I waited 
twenty-seven minutes; I know how long it was 
because I was watching the clock. Then the mes¬ 
senger came back and told me your home was 
closed and all your family gone to Florida.” 

“You came to find me! You did come!” He 
bent his head again; it was beyond language; 
there was nothing he could say about it in words. 
“But I wasn’t in Florida. I was at the School of 
Forestry, trying to make myself—fit for you. 
And I was coming to Dos Pozos before I went 
back. I was coming to you. You believe that, 
don’t you? You knew it.” 

“Yes, I knew it,” said Ginger, contentedly. “I 
tried to pretend that I didn’t, but I knew it, all 
the time.” She dropped her head to his shoulder 
and stood leaning against him so closely that she 
seemed to be part of him, to belong to him. Never 

284 



CORDUROY 


in the bright days of last summer, in the days of 
the house built upon the golden sands, had she 
given herself to him like this. 

The morning which she had brought with her 
grew warm about them and it was very still. He 
wondered a little at the perfect stillness of the 
young day: then he realized that it was because 
the lone lion had stopped calling. 

Then Ginger remembered, and looked about 
her, startled. “Where is your Scout? Oh—I 
see! He is asleep.” She could see the quiet figure 
on the bed of great ferns with the shabby little 
dog charging rigidly beside it. 

“Yes,” he said, unsteadily, grief and remem¬ 
brance rushing over him again. “He is—asleep. 
My good Scout is—asleep.” Then he told her, 
not in careful phrasing, like a Wolcott, but 
brokenly, raggedly, his red-rimmed eyes stinging, 
his smoke-grimed face working, and they walked 
across the crisp grass and over the bending brakes 
and stood beside him, looking down. 

Ginger was a little above Dean on the hillside; 
she looked at him pitifully and then down at 
Elmer Bunty and back again at her lover. Then 
she put her arms about him. “I wish you could 

285 




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cry/’ she said. She pulled his head with its fine 
fair hair down upon her breast. “I wish you could 
cry— here” 

Mateo Golinda shouted to them presently and 
rode over the crest. He had come up at day¬ 
break, as he had promised, and he had seen, un- 
derstandingly, all that had happened with the 
latest fire, and he had grave words of praise for 
the Ranger. Then he rode swiftly on ahead of 
them; he would ask his wife to have ready a 
stirrup cup as they passed, and he would go on 
to the doctor’s camp, and tell them there. He 
would find Pedro on the trail and take him home. 

It was just as the Scout would have wished it 
to be; just as he had envisaged it. “Tied on his 
faithful horse”; not Pontiac, Chief of the Otta- 
was, could have come with greater dignity back 
to sorrowing followers. Mabel, the lady horse, 
submitted docilely to the strange burden, seeming 
to understand and to have a solemn pride in the 
undertaking; there was a statelier carriage of the 
homely old head. Rusty, the Airedale, heeled 
steadily; sometimes he lifted his nose and gave 

286 



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a thin and mournful howl, but in the main he 
padded down the long trail in silence. 

Margaret Golinda was waiting for them with 
hot coffee and with serene and steady cheer; she 
was as sure, as strong as the hills. 

Her bright and friendly eyes grew dim when 
she looked at the burden the lady horse was car¬ 
rying. “But it was a glorious way for him to go,” 
she said. “The doctor told me what was coming; 
if he had lived.” 

“I wouldn’t believe it,” said Dean Wolcott. 
“I wouldn’t have let it come! I would have 
fought it!” 

She smiled. “This was a better fight. And you 
must remember this: you gave him all the life 
he ever had.” Then she turned to Ginger and 
held out her hands to her. “And you are—the 
girl?” 

“Yes,” said Ginger, gladly, meeting the brown 
hard grip. 

“I knew you were—somewhere. I’m glad he 
has you, now .” She stood in the doorway of her 
wise, little gray house and watched them riding 
away, the small solemn cavalcade. 

They talked but little, Ginger and her lover. 

287 



CORDUROY 


There was too much grief in the air—and too 
much quiet and believing joy, but she told him 
about Mary Wiley. 

“And this winter,” she said, “I will be with 
Mary Wiley again.” 

“This winter,” he said quietly, “you will be 
with me.” 

There was something in the brief sentence that 
made her heart turn over; it was the authority, 
the conviction; it was all that the small group of 
words meant, all that it stood for. This winter 
she would be with him. East or west, going to 
symphonies and settlements and seeing new plays, 
or riding the range and bringing in the cattle; it 
didn’t in the least matter where they would be or 
what they would be doing: this winter—and all 
the winters in the world and all the summers—she 
would be with him. 

So they came at length to the doctor’s camp, 
riding in single file, the Ranger, and the girl, and 
the Scout, “tied on his faithful horse,” and the 
shabby, tired, little dog trotting behind, and the 
gay, kindly people came out to meet them with 
sober faces and with tears . . . “Betcher all the 
squaws cried like ^wything”—he had said, drama- 

288 



CORDUROY 


tizing the last hour of his life, and it was indeed 
“much more exciting than just hearses and hacks.” 

At last he was filling the stage, Elmer Bunty, 
of whom the Scout Master had said that a really 
determined daddy longlegs could put him to flight 
—Elmer Bunty, the ’Fraid-Cat; Elmer Bunty, who 
had fought the good fight; the good scout. All 
the prosperous, poised people stood about him 
sorry and grave, to do him homage. 

Ginger forgot her grief and her gladness for 
an instant when she saw her Aunt Fan coming 
toward her. She was limping painfully still and 
her short chugging steps were unsteady, and there 
was no sea-shell tint on her round face, and her 
eyes were red with weeping. “Oh, Aunt Fan,” 
she said remorsefully, “I’m sorry you worried 
so! I thought you } d know I was going to find 
Dean, and that you wouldn’t-” 

“I haven’t been crying about you,” said Mrs. 
Featherstone, with asperity. “I worried, of 
course, but I knew you could take care of yourself, 
and I had other things to think about. It’s—” 
she gulped back a sob—“it’s Jim!” 

289 




CORDUROY 


“Aunt Fan—I’m sorry! What is it? What 
has happened?” 

“It hasn’t happened yet; it’s going to happen, 
just as soon as I get there.” She pulled out one 
of her flippant, little sport handkerchiefs of pink 
linen embroidered in blue and dabbed at her eyes. 
“I had a telegram, a night letter, telephoned down 
to Pfeiffer’s. He’s sick—terribly sick, and the 
doctor wants to operate, and there’s a chance—a 
big chance—that he won’t—come through.” Her 
chin quivered uncontrollably. “His heart—his 
heart—” She had to stop. 

They stood looking at her and listening to her 
in deep-eyed sympathy, the Ranger and the girl. 
Ginger took one of her hands and kept patting it 
softly. 

“He thinks he won’t come through it,” Mrs. 
Featherstone went on, after an instant. “And he 
wants me to come—as quick as the Limited’ll 
bring me, for he won’t let them operate till I get 
there. And he wants me to marry him again. 
He says if he doesn’t come through—” she 
choked on it—“he wants to go knowing I’m his 
wife; he wants me to have—what he’s got.” She 
gave a sudden decisive sniff and threw up her 

290 



CORDUROY 


head. “And I guess it might just as well come to 
me as to those two sisters of his that are rolling— 
simply rolling —already, and always treated me 
like the dirt under their feet!” She came out of 
her personal preoccupation for a moment and con¬ 
sidered her niece and her lover. “Well!—So 
you’ve made it up, have you? You’ve come to 
your senses?” 

They told her, without resentment, that they 
had come to their senses. 

“Well, I’m sure I’ve done what I could. I 
certainly haven’t left a stone unturned— Look 
here—” she addressed herself exclusively to the 
young man—“you’ll transplant her from that 
ranch, the very first thing you do, won’t you? 
You’ll take her east, won’t you? I won’t have 
to—” 

“I’ll take her east, yes,” said Dean Wolcott. 
“I’ll take her east with me as soon as I’ve finished 
here, but I’ll bring her west again whenever she 
says the word.” 

“Oh, Lord!” said Ginger’s Aunt Fan in exas¬ 
peration. “If you’re going to be as soft as that 
she’d better have married ’Rome Ojeda. Well, 


291 




CORDUROY 


if ever you want to see me, you can stop off in 
San Francisco!” 

Then she grew tender and her very blue eyes 
looked as they did when she was thinking about 
food and making mental menus for herself, and 
she laid hold of them both with her plump, pretty 
hands. “My dears, I’m glad for you; I am glad. 
I think you’ve got something to hold to, and see 
that you hold on to it! Henry and I had it, once, 
and Jim and I thought”—her face contracted 
swiftly. “I must fly and pack. The doctor’s 
driving me in to Monterey to catch the train so 
I can start east in the morning. I don’t know 
what I’m going to do; I won’t know till I get 
there.” She shook her head. “The minute I get 
into New York I’ll have a good, straight talk 
with that surgeon and see if things are really as 
desperate— Of course, the idea of marrying Jim 
again never entered my head. But if I don’t, and 
he does die, I suppose I’ll never forgive myself. 
And if I do —and he doesn’t ”—her eyes snapped 
blue fire—“I’ll never forgive him!” 

Elmer Bunty, the Scout, lay in state in a vacant 
cabin and the Airedale charged outside the door. 

292 



CORDUROY 


The very blond girl went in with an armful of 
wild flowers and tall ferns, and when she came out 
again her eyes were red-rimmed. She saw Dean 
and Ginger and nodded to them, smiling mistily, 
and when the young man was not looking she 
held up two fingers to Ginger’s gaze, uncrossed. 

Dean Wolcott had to go back to his headquar¬ 
ters at Post’s; there were reports to be made, 
telephones to the Chief Ranger at King City, to 
the Scout Master in San Francisco. He would 
come to her again in the evening. 

The doctor was unsaddling Mabel, the lady 
horse, and he had warm words for his Ranger; 
Mateo Golinda had told him things which would 
make an eastern name long remembered in that 
wild county of the west. He had warm and 
hearty words for the two of them, his tired eyes 
kindling. He remembered Rosalia Valdes Mc- 
Veagh and her tearful old song, but he believed 
that “the coming of wintry weather” would find 
them ready and strong. He went away from them 
smiling to himself, and not looking back. 

They were alone, then, save for the grave and 
tolerant horses, and Ginger went swiftly into his 

293 



CORDUROY 


arms. “I don’t want to say good-by even for 
three hours,” she said, rebelliously. “But you’ll 
be coming back; always you’ll be coming back, 
and always it will be as it was on Aleck’s bridge.” 

Snort came nearer and nosed jealously at Dean 
Wolcott’s shoulder, and he spared a hand for him. 
Then he looked down and kissed the red scratch 
on Ginger’s cheek where it rested against his dull 
sleeve. It was dust-colored, dust-covered. Sud¬ 
denly he threw back his head and laughed aloud, 
gladly, triumphantly. Accolade of victory; sign 
and symbol of battles and beatitudes. “Cordu¬ 
roy,” he said, touching the fabric of his coat and 
of hers, “corde du roi!” 

“Of course,” Ginger said, wondering a little, 
but too deeply content to wonder very much, 
“corduroy.” (1) 


THE END 





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